16 files changed, 64432 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/19491-8.txt b/19491-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12729ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21413 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Way of Ambition
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Illustrator: J. H. Gardner Soper
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19491]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "CHARMIAN, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT AN EXTRAORDINARY CORNISH
+GENIUS? D'YOU LIKE HIM SO MUCH?"--_Page 76_]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  WAY OF AMBITION
+
+  BY
+
+  ROBERT HICHENS
+
+
+  _Author of "The Garden of Allah," "The Fruitful Vine,"
+  "The Woman with the Fan," "Tongues of
+  Conscience," "Felix," etc._
+
+
+  WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR
+  AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE BY
+  J. H. GARDNER SOPER
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+  Copyright, 1913, by
+  ROBERT HICHENS
+  Copyright, 1912, 1913, by
+  THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
+  _August, 1913_
+
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  "'Charmian, what's all this about an extraordinary
+  Cornish genius? D'you like him so much?'"               _Frontispiece_
+
+  "'This is the last thing I've done'"                           40
+
+  "'Of course we wives of composers are apt to be
+  prejudiced'"                                                  242
+
+  "At her feet the crouching Arabs never stirred"               258
+
+  "'Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win!'"            378
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY OF AMBITION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"We want a new note in English music," said Charmian, in her clear and
+slightly authoritative voice. "The Hallelujah Chorus era has gone at
+last to join all the Victorian relics. And the nation is drifting
+musically. Of course we have a few composers who are being silly in the
+attempt to be original, and a few others who still believe that all the
+people can stand in the way of home-grown products is a ballad or a Te
+Deum. But what we want is an English composer with a soul. I'm getting
+quite sick of heads. They are bearable in literature. But when it comes
+to music, one's whole being clamors for more."
+
+"I have heard a new note in English music," observed a middle-aged, bald
+and lively-looking man, who was sitting on the opposite side of the
+drawing-room in Berkeley Square.
+
+"Oh, but, Max, you always--"
+
+"An absolutely new note," interrupted Max Elliot with enthusiastic
+emphasis, turning to the man with the sarcastic mouth who had just
+spoken. "Your French blood makes you so inclined to incredulity, Paul,
+that you are incapable of believing anything but that I am carried
+away."
+
+"As usual!"
+
+"As sometimes happens, I admit. But you will allow that in matters
+musical my opinion is worth something, my serious and deliberately
+formed opinion."
+
+"How long has this opinion been forming?"
+
+"Some months."
+
+"Some months!" exclaimed Charmian. "You've kept your new note to
+yourself all that time! Is it a woman? But of course it can't be. I
+don't believe there will ever be a great woman composer."
+
+"It is not a woman."
+
+"Was it born in the gutter?" asked Paul Lane.
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't say it's aristocratic!" said Charmian, slightly screwing up her
+rather Japanese-looking eyes. "I cannot believe that anything really
+original in soul, really intense, could emanate from the British
+peerage. I know it too well."
+
+"It is neither aristocratic nor from the gutter. It is of the middle
+classes. Its father is a banker in the West of England."
+
+"A banker!" said Charmian in a deplorable voice.
+
+"It is Cornish."
+
+"Cornish! That's better. Strange things sometimes come out of Cornwall."
+
+"It has a little money of its own."
+
+"And its name--"
+
+"Is Claude Heath."
+
+"Claude Heath," slowly repeated Charmian. "The name means nothing to me.
+Do you know it, Mr. Lane?"
+
+Paul Lane shook his smooth black head.
+
+"Heath has not published anything," said Max Elliot, quite unmoved by
+the scepticism with which the atmosphere of Mrs. Mansfield's
+drawing-room was obviously charged.
+
+"Not even a Te Deum?" asked Charmian.
+
+"No, though I confess he has composed one."
+
+"If he has composed a Te Deum I give him up. He is _vieux jeu_. He
+should go and live in the Crystal Palace."
+
+"And it's superb!" added Max Elliot. "Till I heard it I never realized
+what the noble words of the Te Deum meant."
+
+Suddenly he got up and moved toward the window murmuring, "All the Earth
+doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting."
+
+There was a silence in the room. Charmian's eyes suddenly filled with
+tears, she scarcely knew why. She felt as if a world was opening out
+before her, as if there were wide horizons to call to the gaze of those
+fitted to look upon them, and as if, perhaps, she were one of these
+elect.
+
+"Father Everlasting!" The words, and the way in which Max Elliot had
+spoken them, struck into her heart, and so made her feel keenly that
+she was a girl who had a heart that was not hard, that was eager,
+desirous, perhaps deep. As to Paul Lane, he stared at his remarkably
+perfect boots, and drew down the corners of his lips, and his white face
+seemed to darken as if a cloud floated through his mind and cast a
+shadow outward.
+
+In the pause the drawing-room door opened, and a woman with blazing dark
+eyes and snow-white hair, wearing a white tea-gown and a necklace of
+very fine Egyptian scarabs, came in, with an intense, self-possessed and
+inquiring look. This was Mrs. Mansfield, "my only mother," as Charmian
+sometimes absurdly called her.
+
+"You are talking, or you were talking, of something or somebody
+interesting," she said at once, looking round her at the three occupants
+of the room.
+
+Max Elliott turned eagerly toward her. He rejoiced in Mrs. Mansfield,
+and often came to her to "warm his hands at her delightful blaze."
+
+"Of somebody very interesting."
+
+"Whom we don't know?"
+
+"Whom very few people in London know."
+
+"A composer, my only mother, who never publishes, and who is the son of
+a banker in the West of England."
+
+Charmian seemed suddenly to have recovered her former mood, but she
+blinked away two tears as she spoke.
+
+"Why shouldn't he be?" said Mrs. Mansfield, sitting down on a large sofa
+which stood at right angles to the wood fire.
+
+"I know, but it doesn't seem right."
+
+"Don't be ridiculously conventional, my only child."
+
+Charmian laughed, showing lovely, and very small teeth. She was not
+unlike her mother in feature, but she was taller, more dreamy, less
+vivid, less straightforward in expression. At times there was a hint of
+the minx in her. She emerged from her dreams to be impertinent. A
+certain shrewdness mingled with her audacity. At such moments, as men
+sometimes said, "you never knew where to have her." She was more
+self-conscious and more worldly than her mother. Secret ambition worried
+at her mind, and made her restless in body. When she looked at a crowd
+she sometimes felt an almost sick sensation as of one near to drowning.
+"Oh, to rise, to be detached from all these myriads!" she thought. "To
+be apart and recognized as apart! Only that can make life worth the
+living." She had been heard to say, "I would rather sink forever in the
+sea than in the sea of humanity. I would rather die than be one of the
+unknown living." Charmian sometimes exaggerated. But she was genuinely
+tormented by the modern craze for notoriety. Only she called it fame.
+
+Once she had said something to her mother of her intense desire to
+emerge from the crowd. Mrs. Mansfield's reply was: "Do you believe you
+have creative force in you then?" "How can I know?" Charmian had
+answered. "I'm so young." "Try to create something and probably you'll
+soon find out," returned her mother. Since that day Charmian had tried
+to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs.
+Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her
+mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile.
+
+Max Elliot crossed the room and sat down on the sofa by Mrs. Mansfield.
+He adored her quite openly, as many men did. The fact that she was a
+widow and would never marry again made adoration of her agreeably
+uncomplex. Everybody knew that Mrs. Mansfield would never marry again,
+but nobody perhaps could have given a perfectly clear explanation of
+how, or why, that knowledge had penetrated him. The truth was that she
+was a woman with a great heart, and had given that heart to the husband
+who was dead, and for whom she had never worn "weeds."
+
+"What are we to do for Charmian, my dear Max?" continued Mrs. Mansfield,
+throwing a piteous look into her mobile face, a piteous sound into her
+voice. "What can anyone do for a young woman of twenty-one who, when she
+is thinking naturally, thinks it impossible for a West of England banker
+to cause the birth of a son talented in an art?"
+
+"I always said there was intellectual cruelty in mother," said Charmian,
+drawing her armchair nearer to the fire.
+
+"It's bracing, tones up the mind," said Paul Lane. "But what about this
+new note? All we know is a Cornish extraction, a banker papa and a Te
+Deum."
+
+"Oh--a Te Deum!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, looking suddenly sceptical.
+
+"I know! I know!" said Max Elliot. "I didn't want to hear it till I had
+heard it. And then I wanted to hear nothing else. The touch of genius
+startles everything into life."
+
+"Another genius!" said Paul Lane.
+
+And thereupon, as if acting on a sudden impulse, he got up, said
+good-bye, and went away with his curiosity, if he had any, ungratified.
+
+"He's spoilt by the French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs.
+Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have
+delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one
+was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and
+easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and
+using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English
+drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so
+thankful he is not a celebrity."
+
+"Nor ever likely to be unless he marries the wrong woman."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked Charmian with curiosity.
+
+"A woman who is ambitious for him and pushes him."
+
+"But if this Claude Heath has so much talent, surely it would be a fine
+thing to make him give it to the world."
+
+"That depends on his temperament, I daresay," said Mrs. Mansfield. "I
+believe there are people who ought to hide their talents in a napkin."
+
+"Oh, mother! Explain!"
+
+"Some plants can only grow in darkness."
+
+"Very nasty ones, I should think! Deadly nightshade! That sort of
+thing!"
+
+"Poor dear! I gave her light in a vulgar age. She can't help it," said
+Mrs. Mansfield to Max Elliot. "We are her refined seniors. But sheer
+weight of years has little influence. Never mind. Go on. You and I at
+least can understand."
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand, on which shone several curious rings,
+over Charmian's, and she kept it there while Max Elliot gave some
+account of Claude Heath.
+
+"He's not particularly handsome in features. He's quite conventional in
+dress. His instinct would probably be to use the shell as a close
+hiding-place for anything strange, unusual that it contains. He crops
+his hair, and, I should think, wets it two or three times a day for fear
+people should see that it has a natural wave in it. His neckties are the
+most humdrum that can be discovered in the shops."
+
+"Does he dislike his appearance?" asked Charmian.
+
+"I daresay. The worst of it is that he has eyes that give the whole
+thing away to a Mrs. Mansfield."
+
+"What, and not to me?" said Charmian, in an injured note.
+
+"She's fairly sharp, poor dear!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, in a rescuing
+voice. "You mustn't be too hard on her."
+
+Max Elliot smiled.
+
+"And a Charmian Mansfield."
+
+"What color are his eyes?" inquired Charmian.
+
+"I really can't tell you for certain, but I should think dark gray."
+
+"And where does he live?"
+
+"In a little house not far from St. Petersburg Place on the north side
+of the Park, Mullion House he calls it. He's got a studio there which
+opens into a pocket-handkerchief of a garden. He keeps two women
+servants."
+
+"Any dogs?" said Charmian.
+
+"No."
+
+"Cats?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"I don't feel as if I should like him. Does he compose at the piano?"
+
+"No, away from it."
+
+"He's unsympathetic. Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties,
+composing away from the piano, no animals--it's all against me except
+the little house."
+
+"Because you take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said
+her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add,
+without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in
+your views. You can't forget having read the _Vie de Bohême_, and having
+heard, and unfortunately seen, Paderewski when you were a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."
+
+"It is my beloved mother's fault that I ever was a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."
+
+"Ah, don't press down that burden of crime upon my soul! Lift it, by
+freeing yourself from the Brighton tradition, which I ought to have kept
+for ever from you. And now, Max, tell us, whom does Mr. Heath know?"
+
+"I know very little about his acquaintance. I met him first at
+Wonderland."
+
+"What's that?" asked Charmian. "It sounds more promising."
+
+"It's gone now, but it was a place in Whitechapel, where they had boxing
+competitions, Conky Joe against the Nutcracker--that kind of thing."
+
+"I give him up, Te Deum, Conky Joe and all!" she exclaimed in despair.
+
+"Do you mean me to meet him, Max?" asked Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Yes. I can't keep him to myself any longer. I must share him with
+someone who understands. Come to-morrow evening, won't you, after
+dinner? Heath is dining with me."
+
+"Yes. Is Charmian invited?"
+
+Max Elliot looked at Charmian, and she steadily returned his gaze.
+
+"You know," he said after a pause, "that you've got a certain hankering
+after lions?"
+
+"Hankering! Don't, don't!"
+
+"But you really have!"
+
+"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for
+lions. Tigers are my taste."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in
+darkness. And I believe this is one of them."
+
+When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking
+into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the
+prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped
+away from her.
+
+"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very
+vulgar?"
+
+"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in
+London," returned her mother.
+
+"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"
+
+"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd
+naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort
+to keep your head above water."
+
+"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well
+above water without your making any effort."
+
+"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."
+
+"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"
+
+"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be
+inclined to rave about him."
+
+"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"
+
+"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's
+_Teosofia_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play
+leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in
+it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated,
+charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and
+been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his
+day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of
+beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much
+admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She,
+too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick
+Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a
+chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were
+seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party
+which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic
+function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now
+inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at
+which might be met the _crème de la crème_ of the intellectual and
+artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent,
+was ever to be seen.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the
+family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of
+the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his
+death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a
+horror of display, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having
+the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
+Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her
+life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its
+nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women
+who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within
+herself the power to create anything original, and was far too
+intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be
+what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen
+limitations.
+
+Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother
+knew it.
+
+On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining
+together before going to Max Elliot's, she said rather abruptly:
+
+"Why didn't Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"
+
+"Why should he have invited us?"
+
+"Well, perhaps it wasn't necessary. But surely it would have been quite
+natural."
+
+"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."
+
+"Why should I require preparation?"
+
+"The new note!"
+
+"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"
+
+"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is
+in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."
+
+Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done
+a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being
+obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable
+doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber,
+living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying
+injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a
+stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No
+letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.
+
+"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic
+masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:
+
+"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"
+
+"He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she
+may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."
+
+"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"
+
+"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"
+
+"No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep
+like a tired child."
+
+"I don't suppose he will."
+
+"I feel he's going to."
+
+"Then why were you so anxious to go?"
+
+"I don't like to be left out of things. No one does."
+
+"Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!"
+
+"Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my
+beautiful mother."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room.
+
+"You could make any mother be a sister to you."
+
+Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots' green door in
+Cadogan Place.
+
+Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established
+stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept
+it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely
+unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the
+City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he
+had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him.
+He was the friend of _prime donne_, a pillar of the opera, an ardent
+frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came
+into his life nobody seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients
+trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer,
+whose artistic temperament had brought her--or him, as the case might
+be--to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot's
+shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good
+heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not
+succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.
+
+"_He's_ not begun yet!" murmured Charmian to her mother, as the butler
+led them sedately down a rather long hall, past two or three doors, to
+the music-room which Elliot had built out at the back of his house.
+
+"I never heard that he was going to begin at all. We haven't come here
+for a performance, but to make an acquaintance."
+
+Charmian twisted her lips, and the butler opened the door and announced
+them.
+
+At the end of the room, which was panelled with wood and was high, by a
+large open fireplace, Max Elliot was sitting with Paul Lane and two
+other people, a woman and a young man. The woman was large and broad,
+with brown hair, reckless hazel eyes, and a nose and mouth which
+suggested a Roman emperor. She looked about thirty-five. In her large
+ears, which were set very flat against her head, there were long,
+diamond earrings, and diamonds glittered round her neck. She was
+laughing when the Mansfields came in, and went on laughing while Max
+Elliot went to receive them.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has just come," he said. "Paul has been dining."
+
+"And--the other?" murmured Charmian, with a hushed air of awed
+expectation which was not free from a hint of mockery.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield sent her a glance of half-humorous rebuke.
+
+"Claude Heath," answered Elliot.
+
+"How wonderful he is."
+
+"Charmian, don't be tiresome!" observed her mother, as they went toward
+the fire.
+
+The two men got up, and Charmian had an impression of height, of a bony
+slimness that was almost cadaverous, of irregular features, rather high
+cheek-bones, brown, very short hair, and large, enthusiastic and
+observant eyes that glanced almost piercingly at her, and quickly looked
+away.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney remained in her armchair, moved her shoulders, and said in
+a rather deep, but not disagreeable voice:
+
+"Mr. Heath and I are hearing all about 'Marella.' It builds you up if
+you are a skeleton and pulls you down if you are enormous, as I am. It
+makes you sleep if you suffer from insomnia, and if you have the
+sleeping sickness it wakes you up. Dr. Curling has patented it, and
+feeds his patients on nothing else. Delia is living entirely on it, and
+is to emerge looking seventeen and a female Sandow. Mr. Heath is longing
+to try it."
+
+She had held out a powerful hand to the new arrivals, and now turned
+toward the composer, who stood waiting to be introduced.
+
+"Oh, but no, please!" said Heath, speaking quickly and almost anxiously,
+with a certain naïveté that was attractive, but that did not suggest
+simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack
+medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented
+to humbug us."
+
+Max Elliot took him by the arm.
+
+"I want to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Mansfield."
+
+He paused and added:
+
+"Mr. Claude Heath--Miss Mansfield."
+
+Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes--Heath had
+shaken hands quickly--were over. She looked across the room, and saw her
+mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that
+he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in
+that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from
+liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint
+sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man
+admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his
+favor.
+
+Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted.
+
+As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years,
+and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on
+the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many
+people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about
+him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether
+he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested
+her.
+
+Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost
+emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not
+handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness
+which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his
+whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from
+his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather
+thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.
+His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite
+free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut,
+reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere,
+combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and
+manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.
+
+He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly
+on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious
+intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how
+she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.
+
+"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.
+
+"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."
+
+"Was boxing?"
+
+"Boxing!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in
+Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."
+
+Lane smiled with his mouth.
+
+"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species,
+but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This
+one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the
+truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that
+it is so."
+
+Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:
+
+"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames
+say."
+
+This time Lane really smiled.
+
+"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well,
+Max, what is it?"
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney wants you."
+
+"I always want him. I swim in his irony and can't sink, like a tourist
+in the Dead Sea."
+
+"What a left-handed compliment!"
+
+"A right-handed one would bore you to death, and my aim in life is--"
+
+"To avoid being bored. How often do you succeed in your aim?"
+
+"Whenever I am with you in this delightful house."
+
+"It is delightful," said Charmian to her host. "But why? Of course it is
+beautiful. But that's not all. It's personal. Perhaps that's it."
+
+She got up, and walked slowly away from the fire, very naturally, with a
+gesture, just touching her soft cheek and fluttering her fingers toward
+the glow, as if she were too hot. Max Elliot accompanied her.
+
+"And all the lovely music that has sounded here," she continued,
+"perhaps lingers silently in the air, and, without being aware of it, we
+feel the vibrations."
+
+She sat down on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a
+low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a different
+voice:
+
+"Shall we hear any of his music to-night?"
+
+"I believe now we may."
+
+"Why--now?"
+
+Elliot looked toward Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Because of mother, you mean?"
+
+"He likes her."
+
+"Anyone can see that."
+
+After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:
+
+"He's evidently very difficile for an unknown man."
+
+"No, it isn't that at all. If you ever know him well, you will
+understand."
+
+"What?" she asked with petulance.
+
+"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves,"
+he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney,
+delightful though she is."
+
+"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn't want even to ask me."
+
+"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney
+to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so
+clever and artistic--though she's ignorant of music--over the whole
+thing, that--well, here she is."
+
+"And here I am!"
+
+"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.
+
+He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over
+the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:
+
+"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When
+she looked at him I could see at once that she made him feel
+transparent."
+
+"Poor thing! Tell me, do you enjoy very much protecting all the
+sensitive artistic temperaments that come into this room? Do you enjoy
+arranging the cotton-wool wadding so that there may be no chance of a
+nasty jar, to say nothing of a breakage?"
+
+He pursed his rather thick lips, that smiled so easily.
+
+"When the treasure is a treasure, genuinely valuable, I don't mind it. I
+feel then that I am doing worthy service."
+
+"You really are a dear, you know!" she said, with a sudden change, a
+melting. "It was good of you to ask me, when you didn't want to."
+
+She leaned a little toward him, with one light hand palm downward on the
+cushion of the sofa, and her small, rather square chin thrust forward in
+a way that made her look suddenly intense.
+
+"I'll try not to be like Mrs. Shiffney. I'll try not to make him feel
+transparent."
+
+"I'm not sure that you could," he said, smiling at her.
+
+"How horrid of you to doubt my powers! Why, why will nobody believe I
+have anything in me?"
+
+She brought the words out with a force that was almost vicious. As she
+said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes
+travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been
+speaking to him of her, had been making some assertion about her. For he
+seemed to look at her with inquiry.
+
+When Charmian turned away her eyes from his she added to Max Elliot:
+
+"But what does it matter? Because people, some people, can't see a
+thing, that doesn't prove that it has no existence. And I don't really
+care what people think of me."
+
+"This--to your old friend!"
+
+"Yes. And besides, I expect one must possess to discover."
+
+Her voice was almost complacent.
+
+"You deal in enigmas to-night."
+
+"One ought to carry a light when one goes into a cave to seek for gold."
+
+But Elliot would not let her see that he had from the first fully
+understood her impertinence.
+
+"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of
+the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."
+
+"I'm not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."
+
+"There's Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don't think we shall have it
+to-night."
+
+"Then I'll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again assuming a
+semblance of awe.
+
+The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others.
+She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were
+almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close
+to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the
+world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with
+discrimination and with enthusiasm.
+
+"Of course he's a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to
+some artist. "But _what_ a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he
+called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in
+Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a
+criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of
+nudging the air in one's direction so that one feels it in one's side.
+Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a
+biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"
+
+"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."
+
+"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"
+
+"I went to the Royal College at Kensington Gore."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney, who was very cosmopolitan, had a flat in Paris, and was
+more often out of England than in it, slightly raised her eyebrows.
+
+"You haven't studied in France or Germany?"
+
+Heath began to look rather uncomfortable, and slightly self-conscious.
+
+"No," he said quickly.
+
+He paused, then as if with a decided effort he added:
+
+"I think the training a student gets at the Royal College is splendid."
+
+"Of course it is," said Max Elliot, heartily.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney shook her shoulders.
+
+"I'm sure it's quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice,
+gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled.
+"Don't think I'm criticizing it. Only I'm so dreadfully un-English, and
+I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah
+bow-wow, you know!"
+
+At this point in the conversation Charmian tranquilly interposed.
+
+"Mr. Heath," she said, slightly protruding her chin, "when you've done
+with my only mother"--Mrs. Shiffney's lips tightened ever so little--"I
+want you to be very nice to me."
+
+"Please tell me," said Heath, with the almost anxious eagerness that
+seemed to be characteristic of him.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield fixed her blazing eyes on her daughter, slightly drawing
+down her gray eyebrows.
+
+"Well, it's rather a secret."
+
+Charmian glanced round at the others, then she added:
+
+"It's about the Nutcracker."
+
+"The Nutcracker!"
+
+Heath puckered up his forehead.
+
+"Yes." She moved a little, and looked at the chair not far from the fire
+on which she had sat when first she came into the room. "I care rather
+for boxing. Now"--she went slowly toward the chair, followed by Heath,
+"what I want to know, and what you can tell me, is this"--she sat down,
+and leaned her chin on her upturned palm--"on _present_ form do you
+believe the Nutcracker is up to Conky Ja-ky Joe?"
+
+As Claude Heath sat down to reply to this question, Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Conky Jarky Joe! I thought I was _dans le mouvement_ up to my
+dog-collar, but I know nothing about the phenomenon. Where does it
+belong to?"
+
+"Wonderland," said Elliot, in a gravely romantic voice.
+
+"That's the land I've never seen, although I've had the yacht for so
+many years."
+
+"Nor I!" said Paul Lane. "I don't believe it exists, or we must have
+been there. We have both been everywhere."
+
+"Tell the poor things about it," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Then Adelaide can
+get up steam on _The Wanderer_ and realize her dreams."
+
+"But Mr. Elliot told me he met you there, and I remember distinctly his
+saying the fight was on between those two pets of the ring," said
+Charmian plaintively, after a certain amount of negation from Claude
+Heath.
+
+"Yes, but I'm sure he didn't tell you I was an authority on boxing
+form."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"No, indeed!"
+
+"But you want to be?"
+
+"I shouldn't mind. But it isn't my chief aim in life."
+
+Charmian was silent. She leaned back, taking her chin from her hand, and
+at last said gravely:
+
+"It isn't _that_, then?"
+
+"That--what?" exclaimed Heath, looking at her and away from her.
+
+"That you want. It's something else. Because you know you want a very,
+very great deal of something."
+
+"Oh, a good many of us do, I suppose."
+
+"I don't think I do. I'm quite satisfied with my life. I have a good
+mother, a comfortable home. What should a properly-brought-up English
+girl, who has been educated at Brighton, want more?"
+
+"I'm very glad indeed to know that a Brighton education stands its
+receiver in such good stead in the after years, very glad indeed!"
+
+"You are laughing at me. And that's unchristian."
+
+"Oh, but--but you were laughing at me!"
+
+Despite Heath's eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner,
+Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only
+the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now
+she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance
+with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely
+knew why she had done so. But she half thought, only half because of her
+self-respect, that she had been a little afraid of him, and so had
+instinctively caught up some armor, put a shield in front of her. Was
+she really impressed by a well-spoken-of Te Deum? She glanced at Heath
+inscrutably, as only woman can, and knew that she was not. It was the
+man himself who had caused her to fall into what she already thought of
+as a mistake. There was in Heath something that almost confused her. And
+she was not accustomed to be confused.
+
+"I've made a bad beginning," she almost blurted out, not able to escape
+from artifice, yet speaking truth. "And I'm generally rather good at
+beginnings. It's so easy to take the first step, I think, despite that
+silly saying which, of course, I'm not going to quote. It's when one is
+getting to know a person really well that difficulties generally begin."
+
+"Do they?"
+
+"Yes, because it's then that very reserved people begin hurriedly
+building barricades, isn't it? I ask you, because I'm not at all
+reserved."
+
+"But how should I know any better than you?"
+
+"You mean, when you're so unreserved, too? No, that's true."
+
+Heath's eyes troubled Charmian. She was feeling with every moment less
+at ease in his companionship and more determined to seem at ease. Being
+generally self-possessed, she had a horror of slipping into shyness and
+so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to
+speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had
+seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a
+heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was
+to-night! Desperation seized her.
+
+"We must leave the question to the reserved," she said. "Poor things! I
+always pity them. They can never taste life as you and I and our kind
+are able to. We are put here to try to know and to be known. I feel sure
+of that. So the reserved are for ever endeavoring to escape their
+destiny. No wonder they are punished!"
+
+"I am not sure that I entirely agree with your view as to the reason why
+we are put here," observed Heath, without a trace of obvious sarcasm.
+Nevertheless, the mere words stung Charmian's almost childish
+self-conceit.
+
+"But I wasn't claiming to have pierced the Creator's most secret
+designs!" she exclaimed. "I was simply endeavoring to state that it can
+scarcely be natural for men and women to try to hide all they are from
+each other. I think there's something ugly in hiding things; and
+ugliness can't be meant."
+
+"Ugliness is certainly not meant," said Heath, and for the first time
+she felt as if she were somewhere not very far from him. "Except very
+often by man. Isn't it astonishing that men created Venice and that men
+have now put steam launches in the canals of Venice!"
+
+Venice! Charmian seized upon the word, mentally leaped upon and clung to
+the city in the sea. From that moment their conversation became easier,
+and gradually Charmian began to recover from her strange social
+prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt.
+Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the
+talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their
+intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of
+course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments
+must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is
+Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about?
+Charmian said that to herself afterward, and was amazed at her own
+vulgarity of mind. Ah, yes! That was what she had disliked in Claude
+Heath--his faculty of making her feel almost vulgar-minded,
+vulgar-intellected! She coined horrible bastard words in her efforts to
+condemn him. But all that was later on, when she had even said
+good-night to her only mother.
+
+Their tête-à-tête was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception
+at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician;
+but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a
+good-natured woman and seldom seemed to think ill of anybody. "I have so
+many sins on my own conscience," she sometimes said, "that I decline to
+see other people's. I want them to be blind to mine. Sin and let sin is
+an excellent rule in social life." She seldom condemned anyone except a
+bore.
+
+"If you ever pay a call, which I doubt," she said to Claude Heath as she
+was going, "I'm in Grosvenor Square. The Red Book will tell you."
+
+She looked at him with her almost insolently self-possessed and careless
+eyes, and added:
+
+"Perhaps some day you'll come on the yacht and show me the course to set
+for Wonderland. Mr. Elliot says you know it. And of course we all want
+to. I've been everywhere except there."
+
+"I doubt if a yacht could take us there," said Heath, smiling as if to
+cover something grave or sad.
+
+A piercing look again came into Mrs. Shiffney's eyes.
+
+"I really hope I shall see you in Grosvenor Square," she said.
+
+Without giving him time to say anything more she went away, accompanied
+from the room by Max Elliot, walking carelessly and looking very
+powerful and almost outrageously self-possessed.
+
+Within the music-room there was a moment's silence. Then Paul Lane said:
+
+"Delightful creature!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Adelaide is delightful. And why? She always
+thinks of herself, lives for herself. She wouldn't put herself out for
+anyone. I've known her for years and would never go to her in a
+difficulty or trust her with a confidence. And yet I delight in her. I
+think it's because she's so entirely herself."
+
+"She's a darling!" said Lane. "She's so preposterously human, in her
+way, and yet she's always distinguished. And she's so clever as well as
+so ignorant. I love that combination. Even on a yacht she never seems
+to have a bad day."
+
+Charmian looked at Claude Heath, who was silent. She was wondering
+whether he meant to call in Grosvenor Square, whether he would ever set
+sail with Mrs. Shiffney on _The Wanderer_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When Max Elliot came back they gathered round the fire, no longer split
+up into duets, and the conversation was general. Heath joined in
+frequently, and with the apparent eagerness which was evidently
+characteristic of him. He had facility in speaking, great quickness of
+utterance, and energy of voice. When he listened he suggested to
+Charmian a mind so alive as to be what she called "on the pounce." He
+had an odd air of being swayed, carried away, by what those around him
+were saying, even by what they were thinking, as if something in his
+nature demanded to acquiesce. Yet she fancied that he was secretly
+following his own line of thought with a persistence that was almost
+cold.
+
+Lane led the talk at first, and displayed less of his irony than usual.
+He was probably not a happy man, though he never spoke of being unhappy.
+His habitual expression was of discontent, and he was too critical of
+life, endeavor, character, to be easily satisfied. But to-night he
+seemed in a softer mood than usual. Perhaps he had an object in seeming
+so. He was a man very curious in the arts. Elliot, who knew him well,
+was conscious that something in Heath's personality had made a strong
+impression upon him, and thought he was trying to create a favorable
+atmosphere in the hope that music might come of it. If this was so, he
+labored in vain. And soon doubtless he knew it. For he, too, pleaded
+another engagement, and, like Mrs. Shiffney, got up to go.
+
+Directly the door shut behind him Charmian was conscious of relief and
+excitement. She even, almost despite herself, began to hope for a Te
+Deum; and, hoping, she found means to be wise. She effaced herself, so
+she believed, by withdrawing a little into a corner near the fire,
+holding up her Conder fan open to shield her face from the glow, and
+taking no part in the conversation, while listening to it with a pretty
+appearance of dreaminess. She was conscious of her charming attitude,
+of the line made by her slender upraised arm, and not unaware of the
+soft and almost transparent beauty the light of a glowing fire gives to
+delicate flesh. Nevertheless, she really tried, in a perhaps
+half-hearted way, to withdraw her personality into the mist. And this
+she did because she knew well that her mother, not she, was en rapport
+with Claude Heath.
+
+"I'm out of it," she said to herself, "and mother's in it."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had been a restraint, Lane had been a restraint. It would
+be dreadful if she were the third restraining element. She would have
+liked to be triumphantly active in bringing things about. Since that was
+evidently quite out of the question she was resolved to go to the other
+extreme.
+
+"My only chance is to be a mouse!" she thought.
+
+At least she would be a graceful mouse.
+
+She gazed at the delicate figures on her Conder fan. They, those three a
+little way from her, were talking now, really talking.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield was speaking of the endeavor of certain Londoners to
+raise the theater out of the rut into which it had fallen, and to make
+of it something worthy to claim the attention of those who did not use
+it merely for digestive purposes. She related a story of a disastrous
+theater-party which she had once joined, and which had been arranged by
+an aspiring woman with little sense of fitness.
+
+"We dined with her first. She had, somehow, persuaded Burling, the
+Oxford historian, Mrs. Hartford, the dear poetess who never smiles, and
+her husband, and Cummerbridge, the statistician, to be of the party.
+After dinner where do you think she took us?"
+
+"To the Oxford?" said Elliot, flinging his hands round his knee and
+beginning to smile.
+
+"To front row stalls at the Criterion, where they were giving a
+knockabout farce called _My Little Darling_ in which a clergyman was put
+into a boiler, a guardsman hidden in a linen cupboard, and a penny
+novelette duchess was forced to retreat into a shower-bath in full
+activity. I confess that I laughed more than I had ever done in my life.
+I sat between Burling, who looked like a terrified hen, and Mr.
+Hartford, who was seriously attentive from beginning to end, and kept
+murmuring, 'Really! Really!' And I had the poetess's sibylline profile
+in full view. I was almost hysterical when it was over. As we were
+coming out Mr. Hartford said to his wife, 'Henrietta, I'm glad we came.'
+She rolled an eye on him and answered, with tears in the voice, 'Why?'
+'It's a valuable lesson. We now know what the British public needs.' Her
+reply was worthy of her."
+
+"What was it?" said Elliot, eagerly.
+
+"'There are many human needs, Gabriel, which it is criminal to gratify.'
+Burling went home in a four-wheeler. Cummerbridge had left after the
+first act--a severe attack of neuralgia in the right eye."
+
+Elliot's full-throated laugh rang through the room. Heath was smiling,
+but almost sadly, Charmian thought.
+
+"Perhaps it was _My Little Darling_ which brought about the attempt at
+better things you were speaking of," he said to Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Ah, but their prophet is not mine!" she answered.
+
+An almost feverish look of vitality had come into her face, which was
+faintly pencilled by the fingers of sorrow.
+
+"Sometimes I think I hate the disintegrating drama more than I despise
+the vulgar idiocies which, after all, never really touch human life,"
+she continued. "No doubt it is sheer weakness on my part to be affected
+by it. But I am. Only last week Charmian and I saw the play that
+they--the superior ones--are all flocking to. The Premier has seen it
+five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of
+surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who
+wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a
+mock of OEdipus."
+
+She paused, then, leaning forward, in a low and thrilling voice she
+quoted, "'For we are in Thy hand; and man's noblest task is to help
+others by his best means and powers.'"
+
+Claude Heath gazed at her while she was speaking, and in his eyes
+Charmian, glancing over her fan, saw what she thought of as two torches
+gleaming.
+
+"I came out of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it
+with shame, feeling as if I should never find again the incentive to a
+noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had
+laughed--how I had laughed!"
+
+Suddenly she began to laugh at the mere recollection of something in the
+play.
+
+"The wretch is terribly clever!" she exclaimed. "But he seems to me
+destructive."
+
+"Well, but--" began Elliot. "Some such accusation has been brought
+against many really great men. The Empress Frederick told a friend of
+mine that no one who had not lived in Germany, and observed German life
+closely, could understand the evil spread through the country by
+Wagner's _Tristan_."
+
+"Then the fault, the sin if you like, was in the hearers," said Heath,
+almost with excitement.
+
+He got up and stood by the fire.
+
+"Wagner was a builder. I believe Germany is the better for a _Tristan_,
+and I believe we should be the better for an English _Tristan_. But I
+doubt if we gain essentially by the drama in cap and bells."
+
+Elliot, who was fond of defending his friends, came vigorously to the
+defense of the playwright, to whom he was devoted and whose first nights
+he seldom missed. In the discussion which followed Charmian saw more
+clearly how peculiarly in tune her mother's mind was with Heath's.
+
+"This is the beginning of a great intimacy," she said to herself. "One
+of mother's great intimacies."
+
+And, for the first time she consciously envied her mother, consciously
+wished that she had her mother's brains, temperament, and unintentional
+fascination. The talk went on, and presently she drifted into it, took
+her small part in it. But she felt herself too brainless, too ignorant
+to be able to contribute to it anything of value. Her usually happy and
+innocent self-conceit has deserted her, with all her audacities. She was
+oddly subdued, was almost sad.
+
+"How old is he really?" she thought more than once as she looked at
+Claude Heath.
+
+There was no mention of music, and at last Mrs. Mansfield got up to go.
+
+As they said good-night she looked at Heath and remarked:
+
+"We shall meet again?"
+
+He clasped her hand, and answered, slightly reddening:
+
+"Oh, I hope so! I do hope so!"
+
+That was all. There was no mention of the Red Book, of being at home on
+Thursdays, no "If you're ever near Berkeley Square," etc. All that was
+unnecessary. Charmian touched a long-fingered hand and uttered a cold
+little "Good-night." A minute more and her mother and she were in the
+motor gliding through damp streets in the murky darkness.
+
+After a short silence Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"Well, Charmian, you escaped! Are you very thankful?"
+
+"Escaped!" said a rather plaintive voice from the left-hand corner of
+the car.
+
+"The dreaded Te Deum."
+
+"Is he a musician at all? I believe Max Elliot has been humbugging us."
+
+"He warned you not to expect too much in the way of hair."
+
+"It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"
+
+"Certainly not thirty."
+
+"What did you tell him about me?"
+
+"About you? I don't remember telling him anything."
+
+"Oh, but you did, mother!"
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."
+
+"Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been
+something very trifling."
+
+"Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but
+she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the
+putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject
+quietly, and they were soon at home.
+
+Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs.
+Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom
+went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.
+
+"I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the
+door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when
+she was alone.
+
+Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.
+
+"Wonderful mother!"
+
+"What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"
+
+"Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and
+hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry
+child."
+
+"And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a
+little."
+
+"No, not to-night, you darling!"
+
+Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went
+away up the stairs between white walls to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the
+beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."
+
+Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short
+time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends.
+She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a
+special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young
+man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that
+each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion
+to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art.
+Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other,
+perhaps the two reserves clung together.
+
+These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the
+other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.
+
+A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the
+other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this--Charmian was not included
+in it.
+
+This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was
+incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone,
+against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm,
+chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was
+wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They
+spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the
+house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had
+there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now
+she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her
+own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her
+mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships.
+Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.
+
+Or was she gently, subtly, almost mysteriously excluded from it by
+Claude Heath?
+
+She chose to think so. And there were moments in which he chose to think
+that she obstinately declined to accept him as her mother accepted him,
+because she disliked him, was perhaps jealous of his intimacy with Mrs.
+Mansfield.
+
+All this was below the surface. Charmian seemed friendly with Heath, and
+he, generally, at ease with her. But when he was alone with Mrs.
+Mansfield he was a different man. At first she thought little of this.
+She attributed it to the fact that Heath had a reserved nature and that
+she happened to hold a key which could unlock it, or unlock a room or
+two of it, leaving, perhaps, many rooms closed. But, being not only a
+very intelligent but a delicately sensitive woman, she presently began
+to think that there was some secret antagonism between her child and
+Heath.
+
+This pained her. She even considered whether she ought not to put an end
+to her intimacy with Heath. She had grown to value it. She was incapable
+of entering into a sentimental relation with any man. She had loved
+deeply, had had her beautiful summer. It had died. The autumn was upon
+her. She regretted. Often her heart was by a grave, often it was beyond,
+seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the
+golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not
+repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in
+people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of
+becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to
+her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.
+
+Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had
+not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered
+Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life,
+sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which
+another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him.
+She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.
+
+But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life, had the
+first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in
+Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps,
+troubled or irritated Heath.
+
+Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield
+had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house
+near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she
+had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of
+his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never
+mentioned her dead husband to him.
+
+Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the
+musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had
+heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked:
+"Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his
+compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed
+"No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary
+fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he
+added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to
+hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with
+his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored
+by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he
+had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he
+owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical
+development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his
+greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in
+persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which
+crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield
+taught him not to attempt any more persuasion. He realized that his
+first instinct had been right. The plant must grow in darkness. But he
+was always being carried away by artistic enthusiasms, and had an
+altruistic desire to share good things. And he dearly loved "a musical
+find." He had a certain name as a discoverer of talent, and there's so
+much in a name. The lives that have been changed, moulded, governed by a
+hastily conferred name!
+
+Mrs. Mansfield was inclined to believe that Heath had invited her to
+tea with the intention of at last submitting his talent to her opinion.
+They had sometimes talked together of music, but much oftener of books,
+character, people, national movements, topics of the day. As she went to
+her bedroom to dress for her expedition, she felt a certain hesitation,
+almost a disinclination to go. To go was to draw a step or two nearer to
+Heath, and so, perhaps, to retreat a step or two from her child. To-day
+the fact that Charmian and Heath did not quite "hit it off together"
+vexed her spirit, and the slight mystery of their relation troubled her.
+As she went down to get into the motor she was half inclined to speak to
+Heath on the subject. She was quite certain that she would not speak to
+Charmian.
+
+The month was February, and by the time Mrs. Mansfield reached Mullion
+House evening was falling. A large motor was drawn up in front of the
+house, and as Mrs. Mansfield's chauffeur sounded a melodious chord the
+figure of a smartly dressed woman walked across the pavement and stepped
+into it. After an instant of delay, caused by this woman's footman, who
+spoke to her at the window, the car moved off and disappeared rapidly in
+the gathering darkness.
+
+"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.
+
+She was not certain, but she thought the passing figure had looked like
+Mrs. Shiffney's.
+
+The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very
+large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion,
+almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained
+out of respect for London ways.
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am, he is in! He's expecting you."
+
+The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this
+woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.
+
+"There's some here and there that would bother him to death, I'm sure,
+if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door
+gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows
+that!"
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield, liking this
+unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my
+coming, then?"
+
+"I should think so, ma'am. This way, if you please!"
+
+Mrs. Searle, Heath's cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall
+and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow passage.
+
+"He's in the studio, ma'am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder,
+sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."
+
+"Who's Fan? A dog?"
+
+"My little girl, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to
+him for company as he wasn't working. 'Run, Fan!' says I. 'Go and cheer
+Mr. Heath up, there's a good girl!' I says. I knows very well there's
+nothing like a child to put you right after you've been worried. They're
+so simple, aren't they, ma'am? And we're all simple, I b'lieve, at
+'eart, though we're ashamed to show it. I'm sure I don't know why!"
+
+As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the
+composer's workroom.
+
+At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him
+stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three
+years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair
+inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an
+almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child
+was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred
+appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but
+arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.
+
+"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a
+change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there's
+a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he'll catch cold." (To Mrs.
+Mansfield.) "You'll excuse her, ma'am, but she's that nat'ral, clothes
+or no clothes it's all one to her."
+
+Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright
+blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified
+inquiry combined, perhaps, with a certain amount of very natural
+surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private
+interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically
+sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing
+up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female
+nature in embryo.
+
+Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and
+propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.
+
+"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite
+understand. He's been sick and now he's getting better. Go with mother!"
+
+Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and
+continuously about Masterman's internal condition and "the new lydy,"
+while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at
+Heath.
+
+"I didn't kiss her," she said, "because I think it's a liberty to kiss
+one of God's creatures at first sight without a special invitation."
+
+"I know--I know!"
+
+Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes,
+always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual.
+He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she
+thought.
+
+"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"
+
+"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"
+
+"Yes, isn't it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for
+his studio. The other rooms are tiny."
+
+"What a delightful servant you have!"
+
+"Mrs. Searle--yes. She's a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever
+the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"
+
+He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.
+
+"Fantail's delightful, too!" he added.
+
+"What is her real name?"
+
+"Fanny. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I
+suppose."
+
+"I know."
+
+There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the
+room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in,
+perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very
+handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but
+there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books,
+not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which
+furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and
+papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. The
+piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well
+worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were
+dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor
+there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only
+flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a
+mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano
+there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that
+anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by
+oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in
+color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not
+discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few
+photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music
+and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round
+white collar.
+
+To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy,
+who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved
+the life of the brain.
+
+"And you've a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.
+
+"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I'm not at all rich, you know.
+But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a
+penny."
+
+A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated,
+walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.
+
+"That's my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.
+
+"There's something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield,
+again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.
+
+"That's what I try for. I'm fond of London in a way, but I can't bear
+anything typical of London in my home."
+
+"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets
+weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."
+
+Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant
+eyes.
+
+"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether--may I talk about
+myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.
+
+"Do, if you like to."
+
+"I think I should."
+
+"Do, then."
+
+"I wonder whether a man is a coward to raise up barriers between himself
+and life, whether it is a mistake to have a retreat, as you rightly call
+this room, this house, and to spend the greater part of one's time alone
+in it? But"--he moved restlessly--"the real question is whether one
+ought to let oneself be guided by a powerful instinct."
+
+"I expect one ought to."
+
+"Do you? Oh, you're not eating anything!"
+
+"I will help myself."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney wouldn't agree with you."
+
+"No."
+
+"Didn't--didn't you see her? She went just before you came."
+
+"I saw someone. I thought it might be Adelaide. I wasn't sure."
+
+"It was she. I hadn't asked her to come and wasn't expecting her."
+
+He stopped, then added abruptly:
+
+"It was wonderfully kind of her to come, though. She is kind and clever,
+too. She has fascination, I think...."
+
+"I'm sure she has."
+
+"And yet, d'you know, there's something in her, and in lots of people I
+might get to know, I suppose, through her and Max Elliot, that I--well,
+I almost hate it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well, whenever I come across one of them by chance I seem to hear a
+voice repeating, 'To-morrow we die--to-morrow we die--to-morrow we die.'
+And I seem to see something inside of them with teeth and claws
+fastening on pleasure. It's--it's like a sort of minotaur, and it gives
+me horrors. And yet I might go to it."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield said nothing for a moment. She had finished her cup of
+tea, and now, with a little gesture, refused to have another.
+
+"It's quite true. There is the creature with teeth and claws, and it is,
+perhaps, horrible. But it's so sad that I scarcely see anything but its
+sadness."
+
+"You are kinder than I."
+
+He leaned forward.
+
+"D'you know, I think you're the kindest human being I ever met, except
+one, that priest up there on the mantelpiece."
+
+"Forgive me," she said, making allowance for herself to-day because of
+Heath's evident desire to talk intimately, a desire which she believed
+she ought to help, "but are you a Roman Catholic?"
+
+"Oh, no! I wish I was!"
+
+"But I suppose you can't be?"
+
+"Oh, no! I suppose I'm one of those unsatisfactory people whose soul and
+whose brain are not in accord. That doesn't make for inward calm or
+satisfaction. But I can only hope for better days."
+
+There was something uneasy in his speech. She felt the strong reserve in
+him always fighting against the almost fierce wish to be unreserved with
+her.
+
+"They will come, surely!" she said. "If you are quite sincere, sincere
+with yourself always and sincere with others as often as is possible."
+
+"You're right about its not being possible to be always sincere with
+others."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"They simply wouldn't let you!"
+
+"No," he said. "I feel as if I could be rather sincere with you
+sometimes."
+
+"Specially to-day, perhaps."
+
+"Yes, I think so. We do get on, don't we?"
+
+"Yes, we do."
+
+"I often wonder why. But we do. I'll move the table if you've really
+finished."
+
+He put the table away and sat down on the settle beside her, at the far
+end. And he turned, leaning his back against the upright end, and
+stretching one arm along the wooden top, on which his long fingers
+restlessly closed.
+
+"I was sorry I went to Max Elliot's till you came into the room," he
+said. "And ever since then I've been partly very glad."
+
+"But only partly?"
+
+"Yes, because I've always had an instinctive dread of getting drawn in."
+
+"To the current of our modern art life. I'm sure you mean that."
+
+"I do. And of course Elliot is in the thick of it. Mrs. Shiffney's in
+it, and all her lot, which I don't know. And that fellow Lane is in it
+too."
+
+"And I suppose I am in it with Charmian."
+
+Heath looked at the floor. Ignoring Mrs. Mansfield's remark, he
+continued:
+
+"I have some talent. It isn't the sort of talent to win popularity.
+Fortunately, I don't desire--in fact, I'm very much afraid of
+popularity. But as I believe my talent is--is rather peculiar,
+individual, it might easily become--well, I suppose I may say the rage
+in a certain set. They might drop me very soon. Probably they would--I
+don't know. But I have a strong feeling that they'd take me up violently
+if I gave them a chance. That's what Max Elliot can't help wanting. He's
+such a good fellow, but he's a born exploiter. Not in any nasty way, of
+course!" Heath concluded hastily.
+
+"I quite understand."
+
+"And, I don't want to seem conceited, but I see there's something about
+me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have
+never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day
+she called. She wants me to go with her on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise."
+
+"To Wonderland?"
+
+Heath shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"In the Mediterranean, I believe."
+
+"Doesn't that tempt you?"
+
+"Yes, terribly. But I flatly refused to go. But she knew I was tempted.
+It's only curiosity on her part," he added, with a sort of hot, angry
+boyishness. "She can't make me out, and I didn't call. That's why she
+asked me."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield mentally added a "partly" to the last sentence.
+
+"You're very much afraid of exposing yourself--or is it your talent?--to
+the influence of what we may as well call the world," she said.
+
+"I suppose one's talent is oneself, one's best self."
+
+"Perhaps so. I have none. You know best about that. I expect you are
+right in being afraid."
+
+"You don't think I'm merely a rather absurd coward and egoist?"
+
+"Oh, no! But some people--many, I think--would say a talent is meant to
+be used, to be given to the light."
+
+"I know. But I don't think the modern world wants mine. I"--he
+reddened--"I always set words from the Bible nearly or from the
+Prayer-Book."
+
+Smiling a little, as if saving something by humor, he added:
+
+"Not the _Song of Solomon_."
+
+"But don't the English--"
+
+He stopped her.
+
+"Good heavens! I know you are thinking of the Handel Festival and
+_Elijah_ in the provinces!" he exclaimed. "I know you are!"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I should like to play you one or two of my things," he said
+impulsively. "Then you'll see at once."
+
+He went toward the piano. She sat still. She was with the striking
+unreserve of the reserved man when he has cast his protector or his
+demon away. With his back to her Heath turned over some music, moved a
+pile of sheets, set them down on the floor under the piano, searched.
+
+"Oh, here it is!"
+
+[Illustration: "'THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE'"--_Page 41_]
+
+He grasped some manuscript, put it on the music-stand, and sat down.
+
+"This is the last thing I've done. The words are taken from the
+sixteenth chapter of Revelation--'And I heard a great voice out of the
+temple saying to the seven angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials
+of the wrath of God upon the earth."' And so on."
+
+With a sort of anger his hands descended and struck the keys. Speaking
+through his music he gave Mrs. Mansfield indications of what it was
+expressing.
+
+"This is the sea. 'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea,
+and it became as the blood of a dead man.... The fourth angel poured out
+his vial upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with
+fire.... The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River
+Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings
+of the East might be prepared.'"
+
+The last words which Heath had set were those in the fifteenth verse of
+the chapter--"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and
+keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame."
+
+When he had finished he got up from the piano with a flushed face and,
+again speaking in a boyish and almost naive manner, said quickly:
+
+"There, that gives you an idea of the sort of thing I do and care about
+doing. For, of course, I never will attempt any subject that doesn't
+thoroughly interest me."
+
+He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if
+struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the
+settle.
+
+"Have you orchestrated it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I've just finished the orchestration."
+
+"Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra?
+Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't."
+
+"I do."
+
+The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.
+
+"The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty
+distaste for publicity."
+
+He sprang up.
+
+"If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then
+I'll have done."
+
+He went once more to the piano.
+
+When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him.
+After a moment she said:
+
+"You are sincere in your music?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his
+work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"I had two or three things done at the College concerts," Heath
+continued. "I don't think they were much liked. They were considered
+very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer
+one's means or one can't express oneself at all."
+
+"And now you work quite alone?"
+
+"Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.
+
+"You are independent, then."
+
+"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of
+thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money
+temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my
+compositions. I know that."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write
+an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to
+suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to
+see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words,
+"and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the
+East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in
+the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost
+riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said
+exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the
+thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath
+and said:
+
+"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very powerful
+imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."
+
+Heath looked pleased.
+
+"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."
+
+They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs.
+Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by
+something maternal with which she was much more at ease.
+
+Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio
+and asked him not to come to the front door.
+
+"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't
+stayed too long?"
+
+"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's
+nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do
+keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"
+
+"I daresay there are."
+
+"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women
+runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."
+
+"Has Fan begun yet?"
+
+Mrs. Searle blushed.
+
+"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone
+interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."
+
+"I must take care what I'm about."
+
+"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure--"
+
+The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked
+out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened,
+almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was
+dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."
+
+The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself
+wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just
+heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she
+was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an
+Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs.
+Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was
+still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of
+the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive
+look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From
+her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her
+perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in
+search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady
+Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless
+and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong
+while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved
+nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was
+fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently
+when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as
+they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably
+cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with
+_The Wanderer_ unless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He
+was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British
+Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for
+him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo,
+Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst
+of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and
+interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her,
+and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy," as
+if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built,
+handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable
+tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes
+in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had
+a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to
+perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their
+restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to
+Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And
+Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a
+sensible fellow.
+
+Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her
+husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
+
+"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from
+her. "Another gown gone wrong?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black
+hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.
+
+Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.
+
+"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I
+wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy,"
+he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."
+
+His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the
+frankness of a grief-stricken child.
+
+"I never shall!"
+
+"Why not, Addie?"
+
+"There's something in me--I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who
+didn't get tired of me!"
+
+She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:
+
+"So what hope is there? And I _do_ so want to enjoy myself! I wonder if
+there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I
+do?"
+
+Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of
+the hand which held his cigar.
+
+"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What
+else are we here for?"
+
+He spoke seriously.
+
+"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose--to keep it up, don't you
+know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down
+it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"
+
+He flicked the ash from his cigar.
+
+"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated
+curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things
+if the things were closely connected with herself.
+
+"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for
+ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."
+
+She had just been for a month in Paris.
+
+"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.
+
+"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.
+
+"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want
+Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the
+only living man I want to have on the cruise."
+
+"Who is he?" observed Mr. Shiffney. "I've never heard of him. Is he one
+of your special pals?"
+
+"Not yet. I met him at Max's. He's a composer, and I want to know what
+he's like."
+
+"I expect he's like all the rest."
+
+"No, he isn't!" she observed decisively.
+
+"Why won't he come? Perhaps he's a bad sailor."
+
+"He didn't even trouble himself to say that. He was in such a hurry to
+refuse that he didn't bother about an excuse. And this afternoon he
+called, when I was in, and never asked for me, only left cards and
+bolted, although I had been to his house to ask him to come on _The
+Wanderer_."
+
+"Afraid of you, is he?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. He's never been among _us_."
+
+"Poor chap! But surely that's a reason for him to want to get in?"
+
+"Wouldn't you think so? Wouldn't anyone think so? The way I'm bombarded!
+But he seems only anxious to keep out of everything."
+
+"A pose very likely."
+
+"I don't believe it is."
+
+"I leave it to you. No one sharper in London. Is he a gentleman--all
+that sort of thing?"
+
+"Oh, of course!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney pulled up his trousers a little more, exposing a pair of
+striped silk socks which emerged from shining boots protected by white
+spats.
+
+"To be sure. If he hadn't been he'd have jumped at you and _The
+Wanderer_."
+
+"Naturally. I shan't go at all now! What an unlucky woman I always am!"
+
+"You never let anyone know it."
+
+"Well, Jimmy, I'm not quite a fool. Be down on your luck and not a soul
+will stay near you."
+
+"I should think not. Why should they? One wants a bit of life, not to
+hear people howling and groaning all about one. It's awful to be with
+anyone who's under the weather."
+
+"Ghastly! I can't stand it! But, all the same, it's a fearful _corvée_
+to keep it up when you're persecuted as I am."
+
+"Poor old Addie!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney threw his cigar into the grate reflectively and lightly
+touched his moustaches, which were turned upward, but not in a military
+manner.
+
+"Things never seem quite right for you," he continued.
+
+"And other women have such a splendid time!" she exclaimed. "The
+disgusting thing is that he goes all the while to Violet Mansfield."
+
+"She's dull enough and quite old too."
+
+"No, she isn't dull. You're wrong there."
+
+"I daresay. She doesn't amuse me."
+
+"She's not your sort."
+
+"Too feverish, too keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind
+you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them
+jumped at one."
+
+"He does, apparently, unless it's really Charmian."
+
+"The girl? She's not bad. Wants to be much cleverer than she is, of
+course, like pretty nearly all the girls, except the sporting lot; but
+not bad."
+
+"Jimmy"--Mrs. Shiffney's eyes began once more to look audacious--"shall
+I ask Charmian Mansfield to come on the yacht?"
+
+"You think that might bring him? Why not ask both of them?"
+
+"No; I won't have the mother!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I won't!"
+
+"The best of reasons, too."
+
+"You understand us better than any man in London."
+
+She sat reflecting. She was beginning to look quite cheerful.
+
+"It would be rather fun," she resumed, after a minute. "Charmian
+Mansfield, Max--if he can get away--Paul Lane. It isn't the party I'd
+thought of, but still--"
+
+"Which of them were you going to take?"
+
+"Never mind."
+
+"I don't. And where did you mean to go?"
+
+"I told him to the Mediterranean."
+
+"But it wasn't!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! Where can one go? That's another thing. It's always
+the same old places, unless one has months to spare, and then one gets
+bored with the people one's asked. Things are so difficult."
+
+"One place is very much like another."
+
+"To you. But I always hope for an adventure round the corner."
+
+"I've been round a lot of corners in my time, but I might almost as well
+have stuck to the club."
+
+"Of course _you_ might!"
+
+She got up.
+
+"I must think about Charmian," she said, as she went casually out of the
+room.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney turned the new idea over and over in her restless mind,
+which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could
+not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself,
+never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted,
+had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen
+everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all the books
+that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures
+which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and,
+moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or
+strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own
+line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon
+became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle.
+Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal
+feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she
+generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not
+condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick
+of it." And very soon a great many of her friends, and their friends,
+were sick of it, too. She was a quicksand because she was a singularly
+complete egoist. But very few people who met her failed to come under
+the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse,
+swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally,
+in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly,
+did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her
+gaiety and _joie de vivre_ and for the energy with which she pursued
+enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned.
+She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time
+she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with
+their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life.
+And wise people did not bother her.
+
+She had seen that, for a moment, Claude Heath had been tempted by the
+invitation to the cruise. A sudden light had gleamed in his eyes, and
+her swift apprehension had gathered something of what was passing in his
+imagination. But almost immediately the light had vanished and the quick
+refusal had come. And she knew that it was a refusal which she could not
+persuade him to cancel unless she called someone to her assistance. His
+austerity, which attracted her whimsical and unscrupulous nature, fought
+something else in him and conquered. But the something else, if it could
+be revived, given new strength, would make a cruise with him, even to
+all the old places, quite interesting, Mrs. Shiffney thought. And any
+refusal always made her greedy and obstinate. "I _will_ have it!" was
+the natural reply of her nature to any "You can't have it!"
+
+She often acted impulsively, hurried by caprices and desires, and that
+same evening she sent the following note to Charmian:
+
+                                               GROSVENOR SQUARE,
+                                                      _Thursday._
+
+     DEAR CHARMIAN,--You've never been on the yacht, though
+     I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London
+     for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the
+     same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a
+     pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of
+     starting some time next month on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise, to
+     the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in,
+     but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew
+     and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to
+     get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he
+     works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all
+     in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful
+     mother.--In tearing haste, Yours,
+                                               ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY.
+
+"Why has she asked me?" said Charmian to herself, laying this note down
+after reading it twice.
+
+She had always known Mrs. Shiffney, but she had never before been asked
+to go on a cruise in the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had always called her
+Charmian, as she called Mrs. Mansfield Violet. But there had never been
+even a hint of genuine intimacy between the girl and the married woman,
+and they seldom met except in society, and then only spoke a few casual
+and unmeaning words. They had little in common, Charmian supposed,
+except their mutual knowledge of quantities of people and of a certain
+social life.
+
+Claude Heath on _The Wanderer_!
+
+Charmian took the note to her mother.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has suddenly taken a fancy to me, Madretta," she said.
+"Look at this!"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield read the note and gave it back.
+
+"Do you want to go?" she asked, looking at the girl, not without a still
+curiosity.
+
+Charmian twisted her lips.
+
+"I don't know. You see, it's all very vague. I should like to be sure
+who's going. I think it's very reckless to take any chances on a yacht."
+
+"Claude Heath isn't going."
+
+Charmian raised her eyebrows.
+
+"But has she asked him?"
+
+"Yes. And he's refused. He told me so on Monday."
+
+"You're quite sure he won't go?"
+
+"He said he wasn't going."
+
+Charmian looked lightly doubtful.
+
+"Shall I go?" she said. "Would you mind if I did?"
+
+"Do you really want to?"
+
+"I don't think I care much either way. Why has she asked me?"
+
+"Adelaide? I daresay she likes you. And you wouldn't be unpleasant on a
+yacht, would you?"
+
+"That depends, I expect. You'd allow me to go?"
+
+"If I knew who the rest of the party were to be--definitely."
+
+"I won't answer till to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield did not feel sure what was Charmian's desire in the
+matter. She did not quite understand her child. She wondered, too, why
+Mrs. Shiffney had asked Charmian to go on the yacht, why she implied
+that Claude Heath might make one of the party when he had refused to go.
+It occurred to Mrs. Mansfield that Adelaide might mean to use Charmian
+as a lure to draw Heath into the expedition. But, if so, surely she
+quite misunderstood the acquaintanceship between them. Heath was
+her--Mrs. Mansfield's--friend. How often she had wished that Charmian
+and he were more at ease together, liked each other better. It was odd
+that Adelaide should fall into such a mistake. And yet what other
+meaning could her note have? She wrote as if the question of Heath's
+going or not were undecided.
+
+Was it undecided? Did Adelaide, with her piercing and clever eyes, see
+more clearly into Heath's nature than Mrs. Mansfield could?
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had an extraordinary capacity for getting what she wanted.
+The hidden tragedy of her existence was that she was never satisfied
+with what she got. She wanted to draw Claude Heath out of his retirement
+into the big current of life by which she and her friends were buoyantly
+carried along through changing and brilliant scenes. His refusal had no
+doubt hardened a mere caprice into a strong desire. Mrs. Mansfield
+realized that Adelaide would not leave Heath alone now. The note to
+Charmian showed an intention not abandoned. But why should Adelaide
+suppose that Heath's acceptance might be dependent on anything done by
+Charmian?
+
+Mrs. Mansfield knew well, and respected, Mrs. Shiffney's haphazard
+cleverness, which, in matters connected with the worldly life, sometimes
+almost amounted to genius. That note to Charmian gave a new direction to
+her thoughts, set certain subtleties of the past which had vaguely
+troubled her in a new and stronger light. She awaited, with an interest
+that was not wholly pleasant, Charmian's decision of the morrow.
+
+Charmian had been very casual in manner when she came to her mother with
+the surprising invitation. She was almost as casual on the following
+morning when she entered the dining-room where Mrs. Mansfield was
+breakfasting by electric light. For a gloom as of night hung over the
+Square, although it was ten o'clock.
+
+"Have you been thinking it over, Charmian?" said her mother, as the girl
+sat languidly down.
+
+"Yes, mother--lazily."
+
+She sipped her tea, looking straight before her with a cold and dreamy
+expression.
+
+"Have you been active enough to arrive at any conclusion?"
+
+"I got up quite undecided, but now I think I'll say 'Yes,' if you don't
+mind. When I looked out of the window this morning I felt as if the
+Mediterranean would be nicer than this. There's only one thing--why
+don't you come, too?"
+
+"I haven't been asked."
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Adelaide's too modern to ask mothers and daughters together," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, smiling.
+
+"Would you go if she asked you?"
+
+"No. Well, now the thing is to find out what the party is to be. Write
+the truth, and say you'll go if I know who's to be there and allow you
+to go. Adelaide knows quite well she has lots of friends I shouldn't
+care for you to yacht with. And it's much better to be quite frank about
+it. If Susan Fleet and Max go, you can go."
+
+"I believe you are really the frankest person in London. And yet people
+love you--miracle-working mother!"
+
+Charmian turned the conversation to other subjects and seemed to forget
+all about _The Wanderer_. But when breakfast was over, and she was alone
+before her little Chippendale writing-table, she let herself go to her
+excitement. Although she loved, even adored her mother, she sometimes
+acted to her. To do so was natural to Charmian. It did not imply any
+diminution of love or any distrust. It was but an instinctive assertion
+of a not at all uncommon type of temperament. The coldness and the
+dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great
+uncertainty.
+
+On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly
+understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told
+her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had
+supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs. Shiffney had invited her
+not for herself, but as a means of getting hold of Heath. Charmian was
+positive of that. Months ago, in Max Elliot's music-room, the girl had
+divined the impression made by Heath on Mrs. Shiffney, had seen the
+restless curiosity awake in the older woman. She had even noticed the
+tightening of Mrs. Shiffney's lips when she, Charmian, had taken Heath
+away from the little group by the fire, with that "when you've quite
+done with my only mother," which had been a tiny slap given to Mrs.
+Shiffney. And she had been sure that Mrs. Shiffney meant to know Heath.
+She had a great opinion of Mrs. Shiffney's social cleverness and
+audacity. Most girls who were much in London society had. She did not
+really like Mrs. Shiffney, or want to be intimate with her, but she
+thoroughly believed in her flair, and that was why the note had stirred
+in Charmian excitement and uncertainty. If Mrs. Shiffney thought she
+saw something, surely it was there. She would not take shadow for
+substance.
+
+But might she not fire a shot in the dark on the chance of hitting
+something?
+
+"Why did she ask me instead of mother?" Charmian said to herself again
+and again. "If she had got mother to go Claude Heath would surely have
+gone. Why should he go because I go?"
+
+And then came the thought, "She thinks he may, perhaps thinks he will.
+Will he? Will he?"
+
+The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it
+came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even
+despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost
+reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs.
+Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the
+party. And then what would Heath do?
+
+As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs.
+Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."
+
+She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned
+herself to a period of patience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+By return there came a note hastily scribbled:
+
+"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.--A.
+S."
+
+But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing
+more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother,
+who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they
+never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and
+then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them.
+Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in,
+composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house,
+and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a
+conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he
+disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push
+everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one
+afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional
+acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or
+three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came
+into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.
+
+"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.
+
+He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by
+playing before sitting down to work.
+
+"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard
+you playing, and knew you were in."
+
+"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"
+
+"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."
+
+Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out
+at the piano.
+
+"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.
+
+"In the drawing-room, sir."
+
+"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."
+
+He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely
+ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it,
+looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon
+him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world
+with which he had nothing to do.
+
+"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with
+a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."
+
+Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly
+stiff.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and--"
+
+He touched her powerful hand.
+
+"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too
+bad of me."
+
+He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man
+as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her.
+Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position,
+her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified?
+No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally.
+He felt savage, but he felt flattered.
+
+"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.
+
+Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered
+chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.
+
+"May I give you some tea?"
+
+Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she
+regarded him as a boy.
+
+"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."
+
+"But really, I am--"
+
+"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I
+know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."
+
+"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with
+sudden reserve.
+
+"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little
+room! But you never sit in it."
+
+"Not often."
+
+"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."
+
+There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.
+
+"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said.
+"It's about the yacht."
+
+"I'm really so very sorry that--"
+
+"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that
+I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate
+the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may
+think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."
+
+"I am tempted."
+
+"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel
+just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet--she's a sort of
+chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course--Max
+Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps--if he can't come some charming man whom you'd
+delight in--and Charmian Mansfield."
+
+Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:
+
+"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."
+
+"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."
+
+"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."
+
+"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over
+to Sicily and Tunis."
+
+She saw his eyes beginning to shine.
+
+"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's
+rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could
+leave the yacht at Alexandria--"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid
+cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."
+
+"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are
+not to enjoy life!"
+
+"It isn't that at all."
+
+"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought
+artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the
+whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I
+suppose _English_ artists are different. I often wonder whether they are
+wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the
+Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in
+Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do
+forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know
+it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the
+Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."
+
+She laughed and moved her shoulders.
+
+"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in
+the stream of life."
+
+"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are
+foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.
+
+She saw anger in his eyes.
+
+"Perhaps you are getting something--some sacred cantata--ready for one
+of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you
+mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis.
+Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I
+shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at--was it
+Worcester?--once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its
+feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing
+something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"
+
+He forced a very mirthless laugh.
+
+"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us
+talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I
+feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I
+can't accept it, unfortunately for me."
+
+"_Mal-au-coeur?_"
+
+"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."
+
+"_Mal-au-coeur!_" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.
+
+"I'm in the midst of something."
+
+"The Puritan tradition?"
+
+"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my
+line, so I had better stick to it."
+
+"You are bathing in the Ganges?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed upon him.
+
+"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"
+
+Claude looked down.
+
+"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful
+party."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature,
+and quite irresistible, though very Roman.
+
+"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a
+solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll
+give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on
+Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No
+berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot,
+Paul Lane, and you--I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to
+me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really,
+though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get
+one!"
+
+Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but
+something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just
+then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of
+the world. As she got into her motor she said:
+
+"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"
+
+The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She
+was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He
+went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried
+to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in
+life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the
+spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at
+least with ardor--a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly,
+absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction
+had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive.
+Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney thought
+of him? But there was within him--and he knew it--a surely weak
+inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he
+was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature
+side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be
+what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept
+him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left
+the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening
+darkness.
+
+He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.
+
+How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her
+persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential
+position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown
+man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She
+could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It
+was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something
+in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on
+his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told
+himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was
+less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes
+he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.
+
+He had till Sunday to decide.
+
+How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs.
+Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was
+really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused
+again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any
+woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or
+impolite.
+
+What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which
+kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the
+great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a
+coward, a rejector of life's offerings.
+
+Well, he had till Sunday.
+
+Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were
+Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in
+the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with
+their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to
+share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber.
+Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were,
+to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The
+Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented
+without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart
+from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from
+them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of
+them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt
+that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what
+satisfied them.
+
+Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or
+even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner
+circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never
+with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew
+comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who
+were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the
+journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position
+as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did
+not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the
+obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to
+climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of
+ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination
+toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the
+Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been
+happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence.
+Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it
+because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been
+agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it.
+How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold
+with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself
+stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in
+his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if
+poverty came!
+
+He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies,
+the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and
+terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical
+education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great
+talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts
+labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the
+tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the
+will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the
+stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened
+instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because
+artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers,
+conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that
+should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a
+cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with
+the torn feathers of the fallen.
+
+The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great
+artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in
+his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting
+though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read
+them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime.
+Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions
+only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And
+angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed
+born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as
+the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions
+which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.
+
+He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently
+humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the
+fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.
+
+But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of
+strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the
+physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any
+combat.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had driven Claude
+forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the
+London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him
+instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he
+dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster
+with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the
+voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a
+groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to
+scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to
+rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant
+temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the
+yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own
+safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about
+Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his
+armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take
+him on its current whither it would?
+
+He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he
+might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He
+fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted,
+which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of
+this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs.
+Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it,
+though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.
+
+He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs.
+Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he
+read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now
+felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her
+he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were
+transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be
+hidden, something he wished were not in existence.
+
+Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial
+festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to
+him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain
+so because of his way of life!
+
+Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield,
+and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically
+he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings
+of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.
+
+"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.
+
+He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.
+
+"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself,
+even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in
+the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the
+house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began
+to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that
+Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian
+Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's
+account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him.
+They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together
+incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and
+felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly
+she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley
+Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not
+quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go
+on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian?
+Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too
+uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic,
+too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost
+dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped
+up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and
+did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite
+at his ease.
+
+The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and
+took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he
+usually did, and in need of a real friend.
+
+"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.
+
+"Why should it be anything special?"
+
+"But it is!"
+
+He laughed almost uneasily.
+
+"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed.
+"Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or
+three things, if I may."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.
+
+"Anything," she said.
+
+"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other
+evening? Did you--did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think
+it"--he paused--"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.
+
+"Provincial!"
+
+Heath was answered, but he persisted.
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"I thought it alarming."
+
+"Alarming?"
+
+"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."
+
+"Disturbed your mind?"
+
+"Or my heart, perhaps."
+
+"But why? How?"
+
+"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."
+
+Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt
+very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had
+moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he
+were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to
+conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and
+despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner
+was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be
+reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who
+had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought,
+what anyone thought of his music.
+
+"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.
+
+"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.
+
+"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"
+
+"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon
+me."
+
+"It did really make a strong impression?"
+
+"Very strong."
+
+"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking
+care of?"
+
+"I am sure you have."
+
+"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Is that what you came to ask me?"
+
+Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking
+intensely alive.
+
+"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I
+avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."
+
+He moved restlessly.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."
+
+"But I thought you had refused."
+
+"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."
+
+"Charmian has been asked."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."
+
+"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.
+
+"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know,
+for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go
+to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite
+different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very
+much to--to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so
+on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of
+life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I
+wonder what the truth is?"
+
+Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"Follow your instinct."
+
+"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."
+
+"I doubt that."
+
+"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts
+than men."
+
+"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently.
+"She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for
+anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that
+England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are
+hampered by tradition."
+
+"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"
+
+"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"
+
+"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"
+
+"No, no! It can't be!"
+
+He was silent. Then he said:
+
+"St Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."
+
+"St. Francis didn't--if we are to talk of the saints."
+
+"I believe you could guide me."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in
+her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly
+uncompromising.
+
+"Even if I could, don't let me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very
+strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my
+friend!"
+
+There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.
+
+"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship--no woman, I mean--as
+you."
+
+"That's a compliment I like!"
+
+At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs,
+her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she
+pushed the veil up rather languidly.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"
+
+"Nothing in particular."
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she
+emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at
+girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of
+their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.
+
+"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward
+the fire.
+
+"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude,
+uneasily.
+
+"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But
+you don't mind it."
+
+"How can you know that?"
+
+"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's
+deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect
+you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable
+to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"
+
+"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats
+and skirts."
+
+She turned toward Heath.
+
+"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"
+
+She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very
+sure of herself.
+
+"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.
+
+Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.
+
+"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your
+mind?"
+
+Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+On the following Sunday night at ten o'clock Max Elliot gave one of his
+musical parties.
+
+Delia had long since emerged from her rest cure, but was still suffering
+severely from its after-effects. It had completely broken her down, poor
+thing. The large quantities of "Marella" which she had imbibed had
+poisoned the system. The Swedish massage had made her bulky. And the
+prohibition as to letters had so severely shaken her nerve ganglions
+that she had been forced to seek the strengthening air of an expensive
+Swiss altitude, from which she had only just returned by way of Paris,
+where she had been nearly finished off by the dressmakers. However,
+being a woman of courage, she was down in peach color, with a pale
+turquoise-blue waist-belt, to receive her guests and to help to make
+things cheery. And she devoured condolences with an excellent appetite.
+
+"Whatever you do, never touch 'Marella'!" she was saying in her quick,
+light voice as Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian came into the music-room.
+"It's poison. It turns everything to I forget what, but something that
+develops the microbes instead of destroying them. I nearly died of it.
+Ah, Violet! Don't let Charmian be massaged by a Swede. It will ruin her
+figure. I've had to starve in Switzerland, or I couldn't have got into
+any of my new gowns. There's nothing so fatal as a rest cure. It sets
+every nerve on edge. The terrible monotony, and not knowing whether
+those one loves are alive or dead, whether the Government's gone out, or
+if there's a new King, or anything. Quite unnatural! It unfits one to
+face life and cope with one's friends. But Max would make me. Dear old
+Max! He's such a faddist. Men are the real faddists. I'll tell you about
+a marvellous new Arab remedy presently. I heard about it in Paris. We
+are going to have a lot of music in a minute. Yes, yes!"
+
+She spoke rapidly, looking about the room and seldom hearing what was
+said to her. Perpetual society had destroyed in her all continuity of
+mind. Ever since she could remember she had forgotten how to listen. She
+wanted to see, hear, know everybody, everything. Her mind hovered on the
+horizon, her restless and pale-blue eyes sought the farthest corners of
+the chamber to see what was happening in them, while she spoke to those
+within a foot or two of her. She laughed at jokes she did not catch or
+want to catch. She replied to questions she had divined by the
+expression on a face while she was glancing over the head it belonged
+to. She asked for information and travelled away ere it was given. Yet
+many people liked her. She was one of those very fair and small women
+who always look years younger than almost anyone really is, was full of
+vague charm, was kind, not stupid, and a good little thing, had two
+children and was only concentrated when at the dressmaker's or trying on
+hats.
+
+Max was devoted to her and rejoiced in spoiling her. He was one of those
+men who like to have a butterfly in the room with them.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield never tried to talk to Delia in a crowd, and she and
+Charmian went on into the big room. It was already full of people, many
+of whom were sitting on chairs grouped about the dais on which was the
+piano, while others stood about, and still others looked down upon the
+throng from recessed balconies, gained from a hidden corridor with which
+the main staircase of the house communicated.
+
+Charmian saw Mrs. Shiffney not far off, talking and laughing with a
+great portrait painter, who looked like a burly farmer, and with a
+renowned operatic baritone, whose voice had left him in the prime of his
+life and who now gave singing lessons, and tried to fight down the
+genius which was in him and to which he could no longer give expression.
+He had a pale, large, and cruel face, and gray eyes that had become
+sinister since the disaster which had overtaken him. Near this group
+were three men, a musical critic, Paul Lane, and a famous English
+composer, prop and stay of provincial festivals. The composer was
+handsome, with merry eyes and a hearty laugh which seemed to proclaim
+"Sanity! Sanity! Sanity! Don't be afraid of the composer!" The critic
+was tall, gay, and energetic, and also looked--indeed, seemed to mean
+to look--a thorough good fellow who had a hatred of shams. Lane, pale
+and discontented, had an air of being out of place in their company.
+Pretty women were everywhere, and there were many young and very smart
+men. On a sofa close to Charmian a dégagée-looking Duchess was telling a
+"darkie" story to a lively and debonair writer, who was finding his
+story to cap it while he listened and smiled. Just beyond them were two
+impertinent and picturesquely dressed girls, sisters, whom Charmian knew
+intimately and met at almost every party she went to. One of them, who
+wore gold laurel leaves in her dark hair, made a little face at
+Charmian, which seemed to express a satirical welcome and the promise of
+sarcasm when they should be near enough to talk. The other was being
+prettily absurd with an excellent match. Close to the piano stood a very
+beautiful woman dressed in black, without jewels or gloves, who had an
+exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She
+was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never
+smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name
+was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist,
+married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max
+Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of
+musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opéra Comique, stood by
+him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him.
+She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost
+as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her
+out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She
+spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant
+and yet anxious eyes.
+
+As if in answer to Millie Deans's words, Max Elliot moved away with her,
+and took her through the throng to Mrs. Shiffney, who turned round with
+her movement of the shoulders as they came up. Charmian, watching, saw
+Mrs. Shiffney's gay and careless smile, the piercing light in her eyes
+as she looked swiftly at the singer, who faced her with a tragic and
+determined expression. The portrait painter stood by, with his rather
+protruding eyes fixed on Miss Deans.
+
+As Charmian glanced round at the crowd and spoke to one person and
+another she was seized again by her horror of being one of the unknown
+lives. She saw many celebrities. She yearned to be numbered among them.
+If she could even be as Mrs. Shiffney, an arbiter of taste, a setter of
+fashions in admiration; if she could see people look at her, as Millie
+Deans looked at Mrs. Shiffney, with the hard determination to win her
+over to their side in the battle of art, she thought she could be happy.
+But to be nobody, "that pretty little Charmian," "that graceful Charmian
+Mansfield, but she's not half as clever as her mother"! To-night she
+felt as if she could not bear it.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had turned away from the singer, and now her eyes rested
+on Charmian. She nodded and smiled and made a beckoning motion with her
+left hand. But at this moment a singer and composer, half Spanish, half
+nobody knew what, who called himself Ferdinand Rades, sat down before
+the piano with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and struck a few soft
+chords, looking about him with a sort of sad and languid insolence and
+frowning till his thick eyebrows came down to make a penthouse roof
+above his jet black eyes.
+
+"Hush--hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh--'sh--'sh! Monsieur
+Rades is going to sing."
+
+He bent to Rades.
+
+"What is it? Monsieur Rades will sing _Le Moulin_, and _Le Retour de
+Madame Blague_."
+
+There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way
+to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at
+Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his
+mouth, he sang _Le Moulin_ at her, leaning back, swaying and moving his
+thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a
+delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the
+lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of
+bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sang _Le Retour
+de Madame Blague_, an outrageous trifle, full of biting esprit and
+insolent wit, with a refrain like the hum of Paris by night, and a long
+_bouche fermée_ effect at the end, even they joined in the laughter and
+the applause, though with a certain reluctance, as if, in doing so, they
+half feared to descend into a gutter where slippery and slimy things
+made their abode.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning
+several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently
+boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time
+she was speaking to him.
+
+"_Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!_"
+
+"Then sing _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!" she exclaimed at last.
+
+And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "_Petite
+Fille de Tombouctou_."
+
+There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel
+leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And
+Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's
+answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His
+accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the
+little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while
+he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in
+a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the
+curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes
+Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale,
+impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning
+to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently
+upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so
+little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when
+the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept
+for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that
+seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the
+provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the
+room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.
+
+After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's _Heart
+Ever Faithful_. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan
+Square.
+
+"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into
+God's air now."
+
+The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice
+at the nets.
+
+"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end!
+What a stroke of genius!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach--in the supper
+room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left
+the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian
+found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.
+
+Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their
+father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been
+created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the
+beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend
+had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than
+ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid,
+hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and
+bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their
+mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying
+manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by
+wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective.
+But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to
+opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for
+himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of
+half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their
+mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided
+the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately,
+even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers, actresses,
+dancers, sculptors, writers, and painters, who were never received in
+any sort of good society on the Continent or in America. London's
+notorious carelessness in such matters was led gaily by their mother and
+by them. Their house in Park Lane was popularly known as "the ragbag,"
+and they were perpetually under the spell of some rage of the moment.
+Now they were twin Bacchantes, influenced by a Siberian dancer at the
+Palace; now curiously Eastern, captured by a Nautch girl whom they had
+come to know in Paris. For a time they were Japanese, when the
+Criterion opened its doors to a passionate doll from Yokohama, who
+became their bosom friend. Italy touched them with the lovely hands of
+La Divina Carlotta, our lady of tears from a slum of Naples. The
+Sicilians turned them to fire and the Swedish singers to snow. At this
+moment Margot was inclined to be classic, caught by a plastic poseuse
+from Athens, who, attired solely in gold-leaf, was giving exhibitions at
+the Hippodrome to the despair of Mrs. Grundy. And Kit was waiting for a
+new lead and marking time in the newest creations from Paris.
+
+"Charmian, come and sit down for just a moment! Run away and play, Lord
+Mark!"
+
+"With whom?" said a handsome boy plaintively.
+
+"With Jenny Smythe, with Lady Dolly, anyone who can play pretty. Come
+back in ten minutes and I'll be bothered with you again--perhaps. Let's
+sit here, Charmian. Wasn't the _Fille_ too perfect? But the Bach was
+like the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. Max shouldn't have
+allowed it. What do you think of my gold gown?"
+
+"It's lovely!"
+
+"The Greeks knew everything and we know nothing. This dress hangs in
+such a calm way that one can't be anything but classic in it. Since I've
+known the Persephone I've learnt how to live. You must go to the
+Hippodrome. But what's all this about your going yachting with the
+Adelaide and an extraordinary Cornish genius? What's the matter?"
+
+The last words came out in a suddenly business-like and almost self-made
+voice, and Margot's deep eyes, full hitherto of a conscious calm,
+supposed to be Greek, abruptly darted questioning fires which might have
+sprung from a modern hussy.
+
+"D'you like him so much?" continued Margot, before Charmian had time to
+answer.
+
+"You're making a great mistake," said Charmian, with airy dignity. "I
+was only surprised to hear that Claude Heath was coming. I didn't know
+it. I understood he had refused to come. He always refuses everything.
+How did you hear of him?"
+
+"The Adelaide has been talking about him. She says he's a genius who
+hates the evil world, and will only know her and your mother, and that
+he's going with her and you and Max Elliot to the Greek Isles on one
+condition--that nobody else is to be asked and that he is to be
+introduced to no one. If it's really the Greek Isles, I think I ought to
+be taken. I told the Adelaide so, but she said Claude Heath would rather
+die than have a girl like me with him on the yacht."
+
+"So he really has accepted?"
+
+"Evidently. Now you don't look pleased."
+
+"Mr. Heath's Madretta's friend, not mine," said Charmian.
+
+"Really? Then your mother should go to Greece. Why did the Adelaide ask
+you?"
+
+"I can't imagine."
+
+"Now, Charmian!"
+
+"I assure you, Margot, I was amazed at being asked."
+
+"But you accepted."
+
+"I wanted to get out of this weather."
+
+"With a Cornish genius?"
+
+"Mr. Heath only looks at middle-aged married women," said Charmian. "I
+think he has a horror of girls. He and I don't get on at all."
+
+"What is he like?"
+
+"Plain and gaunt."
+
+"Is his music really so wonderful?"
+
+"I've never heard a note of it."
+
+"Hasn't your mother?"
+
+With difficulty Charmian kept a displeased look out of her face as she
+answered sweetly:
+
+"Once, I think. But she has said very little about it."
+
+At this moment the tragic mask of Miss Deans was seen in a doorway, and
+Margot got up quickly.
+
+"There's that darling Millie from Paris!"
+
+"Who? Where?"
+
+"Millie Deans, the only real actress on the operatic stage. Until you've
+seen her in _Crêpe de Chine_ you've never seen opera as it ought to be.
+Millie! Millie!"
+
+She went rather aggressively toward Miss Deans, forgetting her calm gown
+for the moment.
+
+So Claude Heath had accepted. Charmian concluded this from Margot
+Drake's remarks. No doubt Mrs. Shiffney had received his answer that
+day. She loved giving people the impression that she was adventurous and
+knew strange and wonderful beings who wouldn't know anyone else. So she
+had not been able to keep silence about Claude Heath and the Greek
+Isles. Charmian's heart bounded. The peculiar singing of Ferdinand
+Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by
+the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination.
+Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed
+after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable
+of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was
+accustomed. There was much conventionality in her, though she did not
+know it. "The Brighton tradition" was not a mere phrase in her mother's
+mouth. Laughingly said it contained, nevertheless, particles of truth.
+But at this moment it seemed far away from Charmian, quite foreign to
+her. The Greek Isles and--
+
+Millie Deans had stepped upon the dais, accompanied by a very thin,
+hectic French boy, who sat down at the piano. But she did not seem
+inclined to sing. She looked round, glanced at the hectic boy, folded
+her hands in front of her, and waited. Max Elliot approached with his
+genial air and spoke to her. She answered, putting her dead-white face
+close to his. He also looked round the room, then hurried out. There was
+a pause.
+
+"What is it?" people murmured, turning their heads.
+
+Paul Lane bent down and said to the dégagée Duchess:
+
+"She won't sing till Mr. Brett, of the opera, comes."
+
+His lips curled in a sarcastic smile.
+
+"What a fuss they all make about themselves!" returned the Duchess.
+"It's a hard face."
+
+"Millie's? She's in a violent temper. You'll see; until Mr. Brett comes
+she won't open her mouth."
+
+Miss Deans stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her
+and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands
+over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a
+laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a
+small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the
+stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney
+to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door.
+Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to
+Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking
+sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.
+
+Charmian was in one of the balconies now with a young man. She saw her
+mother opposite to her with Sir Hilary Burnington, looking down on the
+singer and the crowd, and she thought her mother must have heard
+something very sad. Millie Deans sang an aria of Mozart in a fine,
+steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang two _morceaux_ from the
+filmy opera, _Crêpe de Chine_, by a young Frenchman, which she had
+helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett,
+commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.
+
+As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room
+beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius
+are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then
+torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior
+to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because
+they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take
+her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman
+sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the
+stout man leaning against the wall.
+
+Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?
+
+The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the
+humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck.
+She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite
+unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all
+of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never
+again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest
+relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath.
+She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young austerity, his
+curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking
+now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit
+him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if
+they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any
+man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.
+
+There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces
+below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly
+judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful
+sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to
+sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of
+setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down.
+Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that
+the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often
+there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to
+attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the
+floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg
+Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door.
+Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange
+color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings
+of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a
+dead man.
+
+"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.
+
+He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog,
+looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be
+detached.
+
+"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."
+
+"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."
+
+The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished
+violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."
+
+"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical critic
+standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."
+
+"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice
+and the--the what you may call it all wrong."
+
+"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and
+shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."
+
+"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.
+
+"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic,
+puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.
+
+"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a
+forced-up mezzo."
+
+Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:
+
+"Charming! No, I haven't heard _Crêpe de Chine_. I don't care much for
+Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really
+going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us
+_Enigme_." Mr. Brett had disappeared.
+
+"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie
+Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began _Enigme_ in his
+most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris
+that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a _diseur_. No one would
+dream of putting him in a programme with me."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my
+programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention--"
+
+"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose
+education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a
+very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you
+all here, is as ignorant of music as--as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I
+say!"
+
+"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You
+will come back, you--"
+
+"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in
+his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
+
+At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric
+brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
+
+Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness.
+Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss
+Deans did not appeal to him.
+
+"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a
+similar ennui when the American was singing.
+
+"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who,
+with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of
+Miss Deans.
+
+And again her mind went to Claude Heath.
+
+"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said
+within her.
+
+And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.
+
+As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in
+the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.
+
+"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of
+her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."
+
+"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.
+
+"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to
+leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition
+that nobody is ever to hear. And--I forget what else. But there were
+four sides of excuses."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know
+when we start."
+
+Her eyes pierced Charmian.
+
+"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden
+on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
+
+That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the
+door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
+
+"If only Rades had not sung _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!"
+
+That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would
+never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such
+music was cruel when life went wrong.
+
+"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
+
+Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that
+from the first she had hated Claude Heath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A fortnight later _The Wanderer_ lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers.
+But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred
+Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over
+to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at
+the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur.
+
+Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough,
+and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got
+out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently,
+volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great
+many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one
+else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.
+
+Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to
+her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little.
+And she had the great advantage in life--so, at least, she considered
+it--of being a theosophist.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again
+_Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ she had felt she must get out of Europe, if
+only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian
+would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's
+refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in
+England in two or three weeks. So _The Wanderer_ had gone round to
+Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her
+there.
+
+Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt
+to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had
+not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was
+sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some
+people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance
+was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her
+collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat.
+All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but
+she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were
+never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a
+passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if
+they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were
+rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were
+eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were,
+trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could
+never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead,
+and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven--she had really been
+married at sixteen--was living as companion at Folkestone with an old
+lady of eighty-two.
+
+Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally
+well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree,"
+and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly
+advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions"
+which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was
+liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about,
+had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just
+herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from
+every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many
+said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She
+possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a
+snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney
+and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her
+mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted,"
+and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services
+she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though
+she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she
+had to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this
+by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent
+accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how
+to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When
+looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train
+sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a
+perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed
+totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the
+meaning of the word shyness.
+
+When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian
+suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation--alone above
+Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed
+like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney
+always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was
+in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but
+they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek
+public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long
+Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.
+
+"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The
+assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.
+
+Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a
+sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of
+general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under
+sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when
+Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything
+this afternoon?" she answered:
+
+"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't
+bother about me."
+
+"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and
+business-like manner.
+
+Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But
+she did not.
+
+On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking
+lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old buffers talking about
+politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on,
+descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged
+garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was
+conscious of a feeling of greater ease.
+
+"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm
+trees by a little table.
+
+"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.
+
+They sat down.
+
+"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.
+
+"I shall."
+
+"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."
+
+"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."
+
+"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"
+
+"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares
+Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought
+so she found we must go away."
+
+Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her
+odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to
+tumble out.
+
+"Isn't it--" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I don't know what I was going to say."
+
+"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss
+Fleet, composedly.
+
+"Something of that sort perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as
+Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."
+
+"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity
+oneself?"
+
+"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.
+
+She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam
+of the sun on it.
+
+"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many
+things?"
+
+"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be
+fifty almost directly."
+
+"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.
+
+"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it
+quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of
+course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."
+
+Charmian put her chin in her hand.
+
+"How did you know what I thought?"
+
+"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that
+kind."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her
+chin.
+
+"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!"
+she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.
+
+"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a
+moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a
+_vieille fille_ who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man
+who didn't want to marry her."
+
+Miss Fleet was smiling.
+
+"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think
+men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."
+
+"How calm you are!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I could never be like that."
+
+"Perhaps when you are fifty."
+
+"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of
+caution very rare in her.
+
+"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."
+
+Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was
+entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had
+principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed
+in a religion--the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet--yes,
+certainly--she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even
+felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything
+else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To
+"go on" at all, ever--how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some
+minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.
+
+An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a
+motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden.
+The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where _The
+Wanderer_ lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going
+to be here again?"
+
+"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it
+for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her
+chair.
+
+"I did once."
+
+"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you
+have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or
+two?"
+
+"I can't say I do."
+
+"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."
+
+"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.
+
+"I--I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said
+Charmian.
+
+"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on
+board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear
+old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."
+
+One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary!
+And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan
+Fleet?
+
+"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm
+lucky."
+
+"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"To be as you are."
+
+After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be
+fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the
+following afternoon.
+
+"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better
+we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are
+several that are beautiful."
+
+Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry
+that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly
+now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last
+frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion.
+Algiers affected her somewhat as the _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ had
+affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it
+to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude
+Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's
+party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical
+gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble
+pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains
+singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and
+deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by
+night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I
+am nothing to him!"
+
+Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were
+violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected.
+She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known
+perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is
+done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with
+my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!"
+besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim,
+squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to
+be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of
+beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a
+lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and
+not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body
+meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere
+specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But
+what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, to
+make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness.
+Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to
+dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be
+elsewhere.
+
+At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but
+when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she
+began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of
+whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively
+at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her
+revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated.
+"She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!"
+thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In
+self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge
+of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she
+spoke.
+
+They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance
+of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there
+before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show
+Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure
+gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent
+preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of
+the hill over which the houses of Mustapha Supérieur are scattered. Here
+no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors
+buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and
+laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world
+that was so near.
+
+Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by
+Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven
+banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and
+flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island,
+just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm,
+and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the
+delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm--they were
+the island, round which slept greenish-yellow water guarded by the
+azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path
+where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses,
+making a half-moon.
+
+Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin
+sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it
+by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained
+by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated
+Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in
+quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades
+in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
+It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people,
+to suggest to them--what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange
+isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which
+they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One
+longed to sail away, to land on it--and then?
+
+Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up
+the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then
+travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just
+at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet
+immediately.
+
+On the shore of the lake there was a seat.
+
+"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm
+very unhappy."
+
+She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought,
+connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some
+strange way that seemed inevitable.
+
+Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat
+tailor-made lap.
+
+"I'm sorry for that," she said.
+
+"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes
+it so much worse. I didn't know--till I came here. At least, I didn't
+really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I
+wasn't so dreadfully wretched."
+
+A sort of wave of desperation--it seemed a hot wave--surged through
+Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and
+receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.
+
+"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that
+nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."
+
+"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give
+Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.
+
+"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."
+
+"I suppose you mean a man."
+
+Charmian blushed.
+
+"That sounds--oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have
+to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care
+about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I
+know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care
+for--perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will
+never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will
+never let me."
+
+"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply
+because it seems to me that one class never really understands another,
+not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."
+
+"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the
+yacht."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.
+
+Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of
+her companion's voice.
+
+"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you seen him?"
+
+"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then
+that he wasn't coming."
+
+"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"
+
+"Is he a great friend of yours?"
+
+"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you
+think of me?"
+
+Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.
+
+"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost
+thought I hated him."
+
+"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.
+
+"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's
+mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet--or may I
+call you Susan to-day?"
+
+"Of course, and to-morrow, too."
+
+"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?
+Do you think I--am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous
+idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all
+the other girls--you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"
+
+There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched
+Susan Fleet.
+
+"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."
+
+"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I
+ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for
+him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."
+
+"Perhaps he likes you."
+
+"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I
+have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we
+know a thing by instinct--don't we?"
+
+"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within
+us."
+
+"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous,
+who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius,
+I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he
+has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the
+world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know,
+nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have
+anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and
+pined to be extraordinary!"
+
+"Extraordinary? In what way?"
+
+"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't
+endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately--quite
+lately--I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the
+perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"
+
+"I'm not laughing."
+
+"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've
+always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've
+made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm
+at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social
+capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.
+And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would
+feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man _manqué_ because of a
+sort of kink in his temperament. And--I know that I could get rid of
+that kink _if_--"
+
+She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be
+madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed,
+almost fiercely.
+
+"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."
+
+"When I look at that island--"
+
+Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said,
+in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:
+
+"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go
+to rust."
+
+Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a
+dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She
+was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her
+intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.
+
+"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day,
+when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to
+me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has
+come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of
+things--here."
+
+"Tell me what it is."
+
+"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha
+Ali, walking toward the hotel--when he was just under that arch of pink
+roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew
+up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all
+an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt--I shall be here
+again with _him_."
+
+She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.
+
+"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems
+to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they
+knew, and told me."
+
+Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.
+
+"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn
+through that man, and to teach him."
+
+"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"
+
+Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with
+possibility.
+
+"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."
+
+"Learn! Why, I've just told you--"
+
+"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be
+expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."
+
+Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman
+had astonished her.
+
+"Do you?" she almost blurted out.
+
+"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I
+think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone
+else."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect
+her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian
+refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other
+habitués of the house, because she really liked him much better than she
+liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had
+she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which
+made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian
+was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she
+had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in
+the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking
+defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her
+voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her
+while Charmian was away.
+
+Charmian in love with Claude Heath!
+
+It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if
+she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her
+affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to
+make her happy.
+
+Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in
+it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.
+Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life
+led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led
+by her?
+
+Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very
+well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was
+beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she
+wished very much to be more clear about that.
+
+Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the
+other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or
+belonged to sets which overlapped and intermingled. They were men who
+were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by,
+her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were
+thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking
+an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a
+certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in
+Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his
+individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well
+that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she
+feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence
+over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to
+its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that
+belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many
+clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were
+gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known,
+men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To
+several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.
+
+But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.
+His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in
+Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had
+excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having
+perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the
+farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto
+she had cultivated the friendship with Heath without arrière pensée. Now
+she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her
+wish to study Heath.
+
+The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about
+Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she
+liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense
+mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social
+ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She
+compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were
+not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost
+fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social
+position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies
+accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the
+desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to
+make ruins and dust.
+
+Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was
+alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he
+loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.
+Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away
+from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung
+to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.
+
+They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery,
+in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was
+orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear
+perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the
+conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element
+of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him
+back from worlds he desired to enter.
+
+Between the two parts of the not long concert there was a pause. During
+it Mrs. Mansfield and Claude left their seats and strolled about in the
+corridor, talking. They were both of them heated by music and ready for
+mental intimacy. But they did not discuss the works they had just heard.
+Combinations of melody and harmony turned them toward life and humanity.
+The voices of the great orchestral family called them toward the dim
+avenues where in the shadows destiny wanders. Some music enlarges the
+borders, sets us free in regions whose confines we cannot perceive. They
+spoke of aims, of ideals, of goals which are very far off.
+
+"Fine music gives me the conception of great distances," Mrs. Mansfield
+said presently. "It makes me feel that the soul is born for travel."
+
+Heath stood still.
+
+"The winding white road over the hills that loses itself in the
+vagueness which, in a picture, only some shade of blue can suggest. The
+road! The road!"
+
+He stood leaning against the wall. As she stood by him Mrs. Mansfield
+felt strangely, almost cruelly, young. It was as if student days had
+come for them both. She could hardly believe that her hair was
+snow-white, and that Charmian had been going to parties for nearly four
+years.
+
+"The worst of it is," Claude continued, "that it is so hard sometimes
+not to wander from it."
+
+"It seems to me you never wander."
+
+"Because I know that, if I did, I should probably never come back to the
+road. What you perhaps consider my strength takes its rise, I believe,
+in my knowledge of my weakness. Things that are right for others aren't
+right for me."
+
+No one was near them. The music seemed to have abolished for the moment
+the difference in age between them. Claude spoke to her as he had seldom
+spoken to her before, with an almost complete unreserve of manner.
+
+"Do you know why some men enter the cloister?" he continued. "It's
+because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines.
+Mullion House is my cloister. I haven't got the power of apportioning my
+life with sweet reason, so much work, so much play, so much retirement,
+so much society, so much restraint, so much license. I could never
+pursue my art through wildness, as so many men have done, women too. I
+don't believe I could even stick to it in the midst of the ordinary life
+of pleasures and distractions. It's like a bone that I have to seize and
+take away into a cave where no one can see me gnaw it. Isn't that a
+beastly simile?"
+
+"Is that why you won't go to Max Elliot's, that you refused Mrs.
+Shiffney? Do you think that the sort of thing which inspires many
+men--the audience, let us say, watching the combat--would unnerve you?"
+
+"I don't say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance,
+or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted
+irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me
+which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but it's
+there."
+
+"And yet you're so uncompromising."
+
+"That's my armor. I daren't wear ordinary clothes, lest every arrow
+should pierce me."
+
+A bell sounded. They returned to the concert room. When the second part
+was over Heath looked at Mrs. Mansfield and said:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+They were in the midst of the crowd passing out. Women were winding soft
+things about their necks, men were buttoning up their coats. For a March
+wind was about in the great city. She returned his look and smiled.
+
+"Ah! You guessed! It's the gallery, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to all
+this fun. Isn't it amazing what a groove one lives in? Berkeley Square
+shadows the whole of my life I begin to believe."
+
+"Don't say the motor is waiting!"
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"Shall we go to some preposterous place--to the Monico?"
+
+"Where you like. It's just tea time, or coffee time."
+
+They walked to the Monico in the March wind, and went in with a group of
+Italians, passing the woman who sells foreign papers, and seeing names
+that transported them to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Berlin. A vastness
+of marble contained a myriad of swarthy strangers, releasing souls
+astoundingly foreign in vivid gesture and talk. They had coffee with
+cream like a burgeoning cloud floating airily on the top.
+
+"The only word to describe the effect of all this upon me is spree,"
+said Mrs. Mansfield. "I am out on the spree."
+
+"Capital! And if I stepped right in to your sort of life," said Heath,
+"would it have the same kind of effect upon me?"
+
+"I don't think it could. It's too conscious, too critical, too
+fastidious. There's nothing fastidious in a spree. I like the March wind
+outside, too--the thought of it."
+
+Suddenly her mind went to Charmian and Algiers.
+
+"Charmian's in the sun," she said.
+
+Directly she said this Heath looked slightly self-conscious.
+
+"Have you heard from her?"
+
+"This morning. She has made great friends with Susan Fleet."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh, a woman we all like, who often helps Adelaide Shiffney with
+things."
+
+"We all like," he repeated.
+
+"A _cliché_! And indeed I scarcely know Susan Fleet. You see what an
+absurd close borough I live in, have always lived in. And I never
+thoroughly realized that till I met you."
+
+"And I live in loneliness, outside of it all, of everything almost."
+
+Lightly she answered:
+
+"With Mrs. Shiffney and others holding open the door, holding up the
+lamp, and imploring you to come in, to come right in as they say on the
+other side of the Atlantic."
+
+"You don't do that."
+
+"Do you wish me to?"
+
+"I don't know what I wish. But I am dissatisfied."
+
+He frowned, moving his chair, lit a cigarette, pushed away his coffee
+cup.
+
+"What is it like at Algiers?"
+
+"Very beautiful, Charmian says. Adelaide and the others have gone off to
+a desert place called Bou-Saada--"
+
+"Bou-Saada!" he said slowly.
+
+"And Charmian and Susan Fleet are up on the hill at Mustapha Supérieur.
+They've left the yacht for a few days. They are visiting Arab villas and
+exploring tropical gardens."
+
+She watched him and sipped her coffee. All the student feeling had gone
+from her. And now she was deeply aware of the difference between her age
+and Heath's.
+
+"I suppose they won't be back for a good while," he said.
+
+"Oh, I expect them in a week or two."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Adelaide is always in a hurry, and this was only to be quite a short
+trip."
+
+"Once out there how can they come away so soon? I should want to stay
+for months. If I once began really to travel there would never be an end
+to it, unless I were not my own master."
+
+"It's quite extraordinary how you master yourself," Mrs. Mansfield said.
+"You are a dragon to yourself, and what a fierce unyielding dragon!
+It's a fine thing to have such a strong will."
+
+"Ah! But if I let it go!"
+
+"Do you think you ever will?"
+
+"Yes," he said with a sort of deep sadness. "On one side's the will. But
+on the other side there's an absurd impulsiveness. But don't let's talk
+any more of me. Do tell me some more about Algiers and your daughter."
+
+When Heath left her that day Mrs. Mansfield said to herself, "If
+Charmian really does care for him he doesn't know it."
+
+What were Heath's feelings toward Charmian she could not divine. She was
+unconscious of any desire to baffle her on Heath's part, and was
+inclined to think that he was so wrapped up in the rather solitary life
+he had planned out for himself, and in his art, was so detached from the
+normal preoccupations of strong and healthy young men, that Charmian
+meant very little, perhaps nothing at all, to him. She had noted, of
+course, the slightly self-conscious look which had come into Heath's
+face when she had mentioned Charmian, but she explained that to herself
+easily enough. Her mention of Charmian in the sun had recalled to him
+the persistence of Mrs. Shiffney, which he knew she was aware of. In
+such matters he was like a sensitive boy. He had the peculiar delicacies
+of the nervously constituted artist, which seem very ridiculous to the
+average man, but not to the discerning woman. Mrs. Mansfield felt almost
+sure that his self-consciousness arose not from memories of Charmian,
+but of Adelaide Shiffney. And she supposed that he was probably quite
+indifferent to Charmian. It was better so. Although she believed that it
+was wise for most men to marry, and not very late in life, she excepted
+Heath from her theory. She could not "see" him married. She could not
+pick out any girl or woman whom she knew, and say: "That would be the
+wife for him." Evidently he was one of the exceptional men for whom the
+normal conditions are not intended. She thought again of his music, and
+found a reason there. But then she remembered yellow-haired Fan. He was
+at home with a child, why not with a wife and child of his own? She put
+aside the problem, but did not resign the thought, "In any case Charmian
+would be the wrong woman for him to marry." And when she said that to
+herself she was thinking solely of the welfare of Heath. Because he was
+a man, and had been unreserved with her, Mrs. Mansfield instinctively
+desired to protect his life. She had the feeling, "I understand him
+better than others." In a chivalrous nature understanding breeds a
+strong sense of obligation. Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she had duties
+toward Heath. During the two weeks which elapsed before Charmian's
+return from Algiers she thought more about his future than about her
+child's. But she was a very feminine woman and, to her, a man's future
+always seemed to matter more than a woman's.
+
+Heath, too, had his great talent. That might need protection in the
+future. Mrs. Mansfield did not believe in an untroubled life for such a
+man as Heath. There was something disturbing both in his personality and
+in his music which seemed to her to preclude the possibility of his
+dwelling always in peace. But she hoped he would be true to his
+instinct, to the strange instinct which kept him now in a sort of
+cloistered seclusion. She knew he had friends, acquaintances, made
+during his time at the College of Music, through the introductions he
+had brought to London from Cornwall, through family connections. Human
+intercourse must be part of every life. But she was glad, very glad,
+that neither Mrs. Shiffney nor Max Elliot had persuaded him into the
+world where artists are handed on and on till they "know everybody." His
+words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they
+feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with
+her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued
+their art through wildness--Heath's expression--with an inflexibility
+quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the
+onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians
+born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics
+did not exist in Heath, she thought. She pondered. He was surely not a
+Bohemian. And yet he did not belong to the other race so noticeable in
+England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives
+in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable publicity, who produce
+in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane
+even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street
+thinks, who occasionally go to a levée, and have set foot on summer days
+in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be dubbed
+with a name. Was he a Bohemian who, for his health's sake, could not
+live in Bohemia? She remembered the crucifix standing in front of the
+piano where he passed so many hours, the strange and terrible words he
+had chosen to set to music, the setting he had given them. It was an
+uncompromising nature, an uncompromising talent. And yet--there was the
+other side. There was something ready to rush out to satisfy
+expectation.
+
+She was deeply interested in Heath.
+
+About ten days after the "spree" at the Monico she received a telegram
+from Marseilles--"Starting to-night, home the day after to-morrow;
+love.--CHARMIAN."
+
+Heath dropped in that day, and Mrs. Mansfield mentioned the telegram.
+
+"Charmian will be back on Thursday. I told you Adelaide Shiffney would
+be in a hurry."
+
+"Then they are not going on to the Greek Isles," he said.
+
+"Not this time."
+
+She glanced at him and thought he was looking rather sad.
+
+"Will you come and dine on Thursday night just with me and Charmian?"
+she said. "If she is tired with the journey from Paris you may be alone
+with me. If not, she can tell us about her little African experiences."
+
+"Thank you. Yes, I should like to come very much!"
+
+The strangely imaginative expression, which made his rather plain face
+almost beautiful, shone in his eyes and seemed to shed a flicker of
+light about his brow and lips, as he added:
+
+"I have travelled so little that to me there is something almost
+wonderful in the arrival of someone from Africa. Even the name comes to
+me always like fire and black mystery. Last night, just before I went to
+bed, I was reading Chateaubriand, and I came across a passage that kept
+me awake for hours."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+She leaned a little forward, ready to be fascinated as evidently he had
+been.
+
+"He is writing of Napoleon, and says of him something like this."
+
+Heath paused, looked down, seemed to make an effort, and continued, with
+his eyes turned away from Mrs. Mansfield:
+
+"'His enemies, fascinated, seek him and do not see him. He hides himself
+in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the
+sun to escape from the searching eyes of the dazzled hunters.' Isn't
+that simply gorgeous? It set my imagination galloping. 'As the lion of
+the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun'--by Jove!" He got up.
+"I was out of England last night. And to think that Miss Charmian is
+actually arriving from Africa!"
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield said to herself: "He's a child, too!"
+And she felt restless and troubled. Naïveté leads men of genius into
+such unsuitable regions sometimes. It was rather wonderful that he could
+feel as he did about Africa and refuse to go to Africa. For Adelaide
+would have taken him anywhere. Would Charmian bring back with her
+something of the wonder of the East? Mrs. Mansfield felt for a moment as
+if she were going to welcome a stranger in her child. The feeling
+returned to her on the Thursday afternoon, when she was waiting for
+Charmian's arrival in her writing-room.
+
+Charmian was due at Charing Cross at three-twenty-five. She ought to be
+in Berkeley Square about four, unless the train was very crowded, and
+there was a long delay at the Customs. Four o'clock chimed from the
+Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece, and she had not arrived. Mrs.
+Mansfield was conscious of a restlessness almost amounting to
+nervousness. She got up from her chair, laid down the book she had been
+reading, and moved slowly about the room.
+
+How would Charmian receive the news that Claude Heath was to dine with
+them that night? Would she be too tired by the journey to dine? She was
+a bad sailor. Perhaps the sea in the Channel had been rough. If so, she
+would arrive not looking her best. Mrs. Mansfield had invited Heath
+because she wished to be sure at the first possible moment whether
+Charmian was in love with him or not. And she was positive that now,
+consciously alert and suspicious, if she saw the two together even for a
+short time she would know.
+
+And if she knew that it was so, that Charmian had set her affections on
+Heath--what then?
+
+She resolved not to look beyond the day. But as the moments passed, and
+she waited, her mind, like a thing beyond control, began to occupy
+itself with that question. The distant hoot of a motor startled her.
+Although their motor had a horn exactly the same as a thousand others
+she knew at once that Charmian was entering the Square. Half a minute
+later, standing in the doorway of her sitting-room, she heard the door
+bell and the footsteps of Lassell, the butler. Impulsively she went to
+the staircase.
+
+"Charmian!" she called. "Charmian!"
+
+"My only mother!" came up a voice from below.
+
+She saw Charmian pushing up her veil over her three-cornered
+travelling-hat with a bright red feather.
+
+"Where are you? Oh, there!"
+
+She came up the stairs.
+
+"Such a crossing! I'm an unlucky girl! Remedies are no use. Dearest!"
+
+She put two light hands on her mother's shoulders and kissed her twice
+with lips which were rather cold. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked
+unusually haggard and restless. An atmosphere of excitement seemed to
+surround her like an aura, Mrs. Mansfield thought. She put her arm
+through her mother's.
+
+"Tea with you, and then I think I must go to bed. How nice to be in my
+own dear bed again! I thought of my pillows on board with a yearning
+that came from the soul, I'm sure. Of course, we left the yacht at
+Marseilles. The yachting there was such a talk about resolved itself
+into the two crossings. I wasn't sorry, for we never saw a calm sea
+except from the shore."
+
+"No? What a shame! Sit here."
+
+Charmian threw herself down with a movement that was very young and
+began taking off her long gloves. As her thin, pretty hands came out of
+them, Mrs. Mansfield bent down and kissed her.
+
+"Dear child! How nice to have you safe home!"
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"What a silly question to ask your only mother!"
+
+"This chair makes me feel exactly how tired I am. It tells me."
+
+"Take off your hat."
+
+"Shall I?" She put up her hands, but she left the hat where it was, and
+her mother did not ask why.
+
+"Is Adelaide back?"
+
+"No, I left her glued to Paris. I crossed with Susan Fleet. Oh!"
+
+She rested her head on the back of the big chair, and shut her eyes.
+
+"Only tea. I can't eat!"
+
+"Here it is."
+
+"I feel as if I'd been away for centuries, as if London must have
+changed."
+
+"It hasn't."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, of course, I've shed my nature, as you see!"
+
+"I believe you think I've shed mine."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Her eyes wandered about the room.
+
+"Everything just the same."
+
+"Then Africa really has made a great difference?"
+
+The alert look that Mrs. Mansfield knew so well came into Charmian's
+face despite her fatigue.
+
+"Who thought it would?"
+
+"Well, you've never been out of Europe before."
+
+"You did?"
+
+"Wouldn't it be natural if I had fancied it might?"
+
+"Perhaps. But it was only the very edge of Africa. I never went beyond
+Mustapha Supérieur. I didn't even want to go. I wonder if Susan Fleet
+did."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't think very much about it. But I begin to wonder
+now. I think she's so unselfish that perhaps she makes other people
+selfish."
+
+"You made great friends, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. I think she's rather wonderful. She's very unlike other women. She
+seemed actually glad to give me the address of the place where she gets
+her coats and skirts. If Theosophy made more women like that I should
+wish it to spread like cholera in the alleys of Naples. Madre, don't
+mind me! I was really ill coming across. My head feels all light and
+empty."
+
+She put up her hands to her temples.
+
+"It's as if everything in my poor little brain-box had been shaken
+about."
+
+"Poor child! And I've been very inconsiderate."
+
+"Inconsiderate? How?"
+
+"About to-night."
+
+"You haven't accepted a party for me?"
+
+"It isn't so bad as that. But I've invited someone to dinner."
+
+"Mother!" Charmian looked genuinely surprised. "Not Aunt Kitty!"
+
+Aunt Kitty was a sister of Mrs. Mansfield's whom Charmian disliked.
+
+"Oh, no--Claude Heath."
+
+After a slight but perceptible pause, Charmian said:
+
+"Mr. Heath. Oh, you asked him for to-night before you knew I should be
+here. I see."
+
+"No, I didn't. I thought he would like to hear about your African
+experiences. I asked him after your telegram came."
+
+Charmian got up slowly, and stood where she could see herself in a
+mirror without seeming intent on looking in the glass. Her glance to it
+was very swift and surreptitious, and she spoke, to cover it perhaps.
+
+"I'm afraid I've got very little to tell about Algiers that could
+interest Mr. Heath. Would you mind very much if I gave it up and dined
+in bed?"
+
+"Do just as you like. It was stupid of me to ask him. I suppose I acted
+on impulse without thinking first."
+
+"What time is dinner?"
+
+"Eight as usual."
+
+"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be
+with you again, dearest Madre!"
+
+She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just
+then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her
+bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her
+hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her
+dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.
+
+"I look dreadful!" was her comment.
+
+Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed
+herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting,
+and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange
+events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to
+help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as
+one of these instruments.
+
+It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude
+Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the
+evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her
+mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs.
+Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter.
+Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from
+child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"
+
+But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not
+mean to go down to dinner.
+
+She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better!
+Look better! Look better!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the
+glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation
+in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably
+of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the
+"Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely
+told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in
+expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more
+repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.
+
+Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the
+Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage
+with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that
+conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry
+Claude Heath.
+
+"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is
+to learn through that man, and to teach him."
+
+The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to
+Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs
+through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the
+great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its
+fellows, "I shall be here again with him."
+
+Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a
+human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in
+the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with
+thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan
+Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She
+had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use
+her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.
+
+But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring
+us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of
+romance and wonder.
+
+But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined,
+too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But
+then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.
+
+For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But,
+oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at
+Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!
+
+Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls
+who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought
+them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and
+powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face,
+and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it
+in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.
+
+Softly she pulled out a drawer.
+
+At half-past seven there was a knock at the door. She opened it and saw
+her maid.
+
+"If you please, miss, Mrs. Mansfield wishes to know whether you feel
+rested enough to dine downstairs."
+
+"Yes, I do. Just tell mother, and then come back, please, Halton."
+
+When Halton came Charmian watched her almost as a cat does a mouse, and
+presently surprised an inquiring look that degenerated into a look of
+suspicion.
+
+"What's the matter, Halton?"
+
+"Nothing, miss. Which dress will you wear?"
+
+So Halton had guessed, or had suspected--there was not much difference
+between the two mental processes.
+
+"The green one I took on the yacht."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"Or the--wait a minute."
+
+"Yes, miss?"
+
+"Yes--the green one."
+
+When the maid had taken the dress out Charmian said: "Why did you look
+at me as you did just now, Halton? I wish to know."
+
+"I don't know, miss."
+
+"Well, I have put something on."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"I looked so sea-sick--yellow. No one wants to look yellow."
+
+"No, I'm sure, miss."
+
+"But I don't want--come and help me, Halton. I believe you know things I
+don't."
+
+Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to
+Charmian, and she did know things unknown to her young mistress.
+Trusted, she was ready to reveal them, and Charmian went downstairs at
+three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes
+before that hour.
+
+Although she was quite, quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude
+Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she
+was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her
+hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of
+shame had a part.
+
+Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at
+him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed
+to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer,
+weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust,
+far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange
+little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had
+a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own
+brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to
+prompt it.
+
+But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For
+his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He
+was looking for Africa, but she did not know it.
+
+Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed
+change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed
+before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it
+made an impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness
+within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her
+face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything,
+about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you
+are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added:
+
+"Your rest has done you good."
+
+"Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You
+mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You
+must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this
+time?"
+
+It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone
+and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But
+he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.
+
+When almost immediately they went in to dinner, Mrs. Mansfield
+deliberately turned the conversation to Charmian's recent journey. This
+was to be Charmian's dinner. Charmian was the interesting person, the
+traveller from Algeria. Had not Claude Heath been invited to hear all
+about the trip? Mrs. Mansfield remembered the imaginative look which had
+transformed his face just before he had quoted Chateaubriand. And she
+remembered something else, something Charmian had once said to her: "You
+jump into minds and hearts and poor little I remain outside, squatting,
+like a hungry child!" She had a sincere horror of the elderly mother who
+clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
+to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
+which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
+made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
+There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
+Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
+generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
+child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
+source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
+be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.
+
+The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
+learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
+pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
+that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
+as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
+to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
+so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.
+
+Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.
+
+"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
+wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
+quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
+desirous tourist."
+
+"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.
+
+"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
+have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
+anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
+rushes on as if driven by furies."
+
+There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
+wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
+unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
+takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
+demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
+express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
+horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
+she felt defiant and almost hard.
+
+"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.
+
+"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting time. I thought a
+first visit to Africa must be a wonderful experience."
+
+"But, then--why refuse to come?"
+
+She gazed full into his face, and made her long eyes look impertinent,
+challenging. Mrs. Mansfield felt very uncomfortable.
+
+"I!" said Heath. "Oh, I didn't know I was in question! Surely we were
+talking about the impression Algiers made upon you."
+
+"Well, but if you condemn me for not being more enthusiastic, surely it
+is natural for me to wonder why you wouldn't for anything set foot in
+the African Paradise."
+
+She laughed. Her nerves felt on edge after the journey. And something in
+the mental atmosphere affected her unfavorably.
+
+"But, Miss Charmian, I don't condemn you. It would be monstrous to
+condemn anyone for not being able to feel in a certain way. I hope I
+have enough brains to see that."
+
+He spoke almost hotly.
+
+"Your mother and I had been imagining that you were having a wonderful
+time," he added. "Perhaps it was stupid of us."
+
+"No. Algiers is wonderful."
+
+Heath had changed her, had suddenly enabled her to be more natural.
+
+"I include Mustapha, of course. Some of the gardens are marvellous, and
+the old Arab houses. And I think perhaps you would have thought them
+more marvellous even than I did."
+
+"But, why?"
+
+"Because I think you could see more in beautiful things than I can,
+although I love them."
+
+Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment
+that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and so it
+gained in value.
+
+"I don't know that," he said hesitatingly.
+
+"Madretta, don't you agree with me?"
+
+"No doubt you two would appreciate things differently."
+
+"But what I mean is that Mr. Heath in the things we should both
+appreciate could see more than I."
+
+"Pierce deeper into the heart of the charm? Perhaps he could. Oh, eat a
+little of this chicken!"
+
+"No, dearest mother, I can't. I'm in a Nebuchadnezzar mood. Spinach for
+me."
+
+She took some.
+
+"Everything seems a little vague and Channelly to-night, even spinach."
+
+She looked up at Heath, and now he saw a sort of evasive charm in her
+eyes.
+
+"You must forgive me if I'm tiresome to-night, and remember that while
+you and Madre have been sitting comfortably in Mullion House and
+Berkeley Square, I've been roaring across France and rolling on the sea.
+I hate to be a slave to my body. Nothing makes one feel so contemptible.
+But I haven't attained to the Susan Fleet stage yet. I'll tell you all
+about her some day, Mr. Heath, but not now. You would like her. I know
+that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name
+for you? I call you--the Great Refuser."
+
+Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"I have my work, you see."
+
+"We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it
+was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished
+Monsieur Rades was with us. He's clever, but he could never do a big
+thing. Could he, mother?"
+
+"No, but he does little things beautifully."
+
+"What it must be to be able to do a big thing!" said Charmian. "To draw
+in color and light and perfume and sound, and to know you will be able
+to weave them together, and transform them, and give them out again with
+you in them, making them more strange, more wonderful. We saw an island,
+Susan Fleet and I, that--well, if I had had genius I could have done
+something exquisite the day I saw it. It seemed to say to me: 'Tell
+them! Tell them! Make them feel me! Make them know me! All those who are
+far away, who will never see me, but who would love me as you do, if
+they knew me.' And--it was very absurd, I know!--but I felt as if it
+were disappointed with me because I had no power to obey it. Madre,
+don't you think that must be the greatest joy and privilege of genius,
+that capacity for getting into close relations with strange and
+beautiful things? I couldn't obey the little island, and I felt almost
+as if I had done it a wrong."
+
+"Where was it? In the sea?"
+
+"No--oh, no! But I can't tell you! It has to be seen--"
+
+Suddenly there came upon her again, almost like a cloud enveloping her,
+the strong impression that destiny would lead her some day to that
+Garden of the Island with Heath. She did not look at him. She feared if
+she did he would know what was in her mind and heart. Making an effort,
+she recovered her self-command, and said:
+
+"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath.
+Do you mind if I tell you what _I_ think?"
+
+"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.
+
+"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you
+ought to give it food. And I think _you_ don't want to give it food."
+
+"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention
+many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose
+imagination was nearly always in a blaze."
+
+Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of
+dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with
+her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give
+herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence.
+She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to
+realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused
+to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her
+depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And
+she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it
+to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any
+longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is
+everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using
+her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by
+Charmian that evening.
+
+Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:
+
+"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen
+the island?"
+
+He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his
+hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:
+
+"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."
+
+"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she
+spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.
+
+"I suppose so. Why not?"
+
+"Oh!" she said petulantly. "You remind me of Oliver Cromwell--somebody
+of that kind--you ought to have lived in Puritan days. It's
+England--England--England in you shrivelling you up. I'm sure in all
+Algiers there isn't one person (not English) who thinks as you do. But
+if you were to travel, if you were to give yourself a chance, how
+different you'd be!"
+
+"Charmian, you impertinent child!" said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling, but in
+a voice that was rather sad.
+
+"It's the Channel! It's the Channel! I'm not myself to-night!"
+
+Heath laughed and said something light and gay. But as he went out of
+the room his face looked troubled.
+
+As soon as he had gone, Charmian got up and turned to her mother.
+
+"Are you very angry with me, Madre?"
+
+"No. There always was a touch of the minx in you, and I suppose it is
+ineradicable. What have you been doing to your face?"
+
+Charmian flushed. The blood even went up to her forehead, and for once
+she looked confused, almost ashamed.
+
+"My face? You--you have noticed something?"
+
+"Of course, directly you came down. Has Adelaide taught you that?"
+
+"No! Are you angry, mother?"
+
+"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
+And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
+against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
+hair become white."
+
+"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"
+
+"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
+me look ten years younger than I do, but if I paid them, do you know I
+think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield paused.
+
+"Lose--friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.
+
+"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
+than perhaps you would believe to be possible."
+
+"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.
+
+Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
+from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
+sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
+her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"
+
+After a moment she got up.
+
+"Bedtime," she said.
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
+other.
+
+"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."
+
+"But you loved Algiers, I think."
+
+"Did I? I suppose I did."
+
+"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.
+
+When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
+vanished.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
+Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
+her child toward happiness?
+
+For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
+loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
+never be bridged?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Heath was troubled and was angry with himself for being troubled.
+Looking back it seemed to him that he had taken a false step when he
+consented to that dinner with Max Elliot. Surely since that evening he
+had never been wholly at peace. And yet on that evening he had entered
+into his great friendship with Mrs. Mansfield. He could not wish that
+annulled. It added value to his life. But Mrs. Shiffney and Charmian in
+combination had come into his life with her. And they began to vex his
+spirit. He felt as if they represented a great body of opinion which was
+set against a deep conviction of his own. Their motto was, "The world
+for the artist." And what was his, or what had been his until now? "His
+world within the artist." He had fed upon himself, striving rather to
+avoid than to seek outside influences. After Charmian's return from
+Africa a persistent doubt assailed him. His strong instinct might be a
+blind guide. The opinion of the world, represented by the shrewd married
+woman and the intelligent girl, might have reason on its side.
+
+Certainly Charmian's resolute assertion of herself on the evening of her
+return had been surprisingly effective. In an hour she had made an
+impression upon Heath such as she had failed to make in many weeks of
+their previous acquaintanceship. Her attack had gone home. "If you were
+to give yourself a chance how different you'd be!" And then her outburst
+about the island! There had been truth in it. Color and light and
+perfume and sound are material given out to the artist. He takes them,
+uses them, combines them, makes them his. He helps them! Ah! That was
+the word! He, as it were, gives them wings so that they may fly into the
+secret places, into the very hearts of men.
+
+Heath looked round upon his hermitage, the little house near St.
+Petersburg Place, and he was companioned by fears. His energies
+weakened. The lack of self-confidence, which often affected him when he
+was divorced from his work, began to distress him when he was working.
+He disliked what he was doing. Music, always the most evasive of the
+arts, became like a mist in his sight. There were moments when he hated
+being a composer, when he longed to be a poet, a painter, a sculptor.
+Then he would surely at least know whether what he was doing was good or
+bad. Now, though he was inclined to condemn, he did not feel certain
+even of ineptitude.
+
+Mrs. Searle noted the change in her master, and administered her
+favorite medicine, Fan, with increasing frequency. As the neurasthenic
+believes in strange drugs, expensive cures, impressive doctors, she
+believed in the healing powers of the exceedingly young. Nor was Fan
+doubtful of her own magical properties. She supposed that her intense
+interest in herself and the affairs of her life was fully shared by
+Heath. Her confidences to him in respect of Masterman and other
+important matters were unbridled. She seldom strove to charm by
+listening, and never by talking to Heath about himself. Her method of
+using herself as a draught of healing was to draw him into the current
+of her remarkable life, to set him floating on the tides of her fate.
+
+Heath had a habit of composing after tea, from five or five-thirty
+onward. And Fan frequently appeared at the studio door about half-past
+four, turned slightly sideways with an expectant glance into the large
+room with the book-lined walls, the dim paintings, and the
+orange-colored curtains. A faint air of innocent coquetry hung about
+her. After a pause and a smile from Heath, she would move forward with
+hasty confidence, sometimes reaching the hearthrug with a run. She was
+made welcome, petted, apparently attended to with a whole mind. But
+while she delivered her soul of its burden, at great length and with
+many indrawn breaths and gusts of feeling, Heath was often saying to
+himself, "Am I provincial?"
+
+The word rankled now that Charmian had spoken out with such almost
+impertinent abruptness. Had he then lost faith in Mrs. Mansfield? She
+had never said that she wished him different from what he was. And
+indirectly she had praised his music. He knew it had made a powerful
+impression upon her. Nevertheless, he could not forget Charmian's
+words. Nor could he help linking her with Mrs. Shiffney in his mind.
+
+Fan pulled at his sleeve, raising her voice. He was reminded of a little
+dog clawing to attract attention.
+
+"Yes, Fantail! I mean no, of course not! If Masterman refuses to take a
+bath, of course you are obliged to punish him. Yes, yes, I know. Wear
+something? What? What's that? Like you? But he's a man. Very well, we'll
+get him a pair of trousers. No, I won't forget. Yes, like mine, long
+ones like mine. It'll be all right. Take care with that cup. I think
+mother must be wanting you. Press the bell hard. Well, use your thumb
+then. That's it--harder. There, you see, mother does want you. Harriet
+says so."
+
+Harriet, discreet almost to dumbness though she was, was capable of
+receiving a hint conveyed by her master's expressive eyebrows. And Fan
+passed on, leaving Heath alone with his piano. He played what he had
+played to Mrs. Mansfield to reassure himself. But he was not wholly
+reassured. And he knew that desire for a big verdict which often
+tortures the unknown creator. This was a new and, he thought, ugly phase
+in his life. Was he going to be like the others? Was he going to crave
+for notoriety? Why had the words of a mere girl, of no unusual
+cleverness or perception, had such an effect upon him? How thin she had
+looked that day when she emerged from her furs. That was before she
+started for Africa. The journey had surely made a great difference in
+her. She had come back more of a personage, more resolute. He felt the
+will in her as he had not felt it before. Till she came back he had only
+felt the strong soul in her mother. That was like an unwavering flame.
+How Mrs. Mansfield's husband must have loved her.
+
+And Heath's hands slipped from the piano, and he dreamed over women.
+
+He was conscious of solitude.
+
+Susan Fleet was now in town. After the trip to Algiers she had been to
+Folkestone to visit her mother and dear old Mrs. Simpkins. She had also
+combined business with pleasure and been fitted for a new coat and
+skirt. A long telegram from Adelaide Shiffney called her back to London
+to under-take secretarial and other duties. As the season approached
+Mrs. Shiffney's life became increasingly agitated. Miss Fleet was an
+excellent hand at subduing, or, if that were impossible, at getting
+neatness into agitation. She knew well how to help fashionable women to
+be absurd with method. She made their silliness almost business-like,
+and assisted them to arrange their various fads in apple-pie order. Amid
+their often hysterical lives she moved with a coolness that was
+refreshing even to them. She never criticized their actions except
+sometimes by tacitly declining to join in them. And they seldom really
+wanted her to do that. Her value to them would have been diminished, if
+not destroyed, had she been quite as they were.
+
+For the moment she was in Grosvenor Square.
+
+Charmian envied Adelaide Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of
+Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny
+something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother.
+Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's
+account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her
+mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would
+not have minded the fact that it was known. But she did mind very much
+its being known when she had not told it. Sometimes she said to herself
+that she was being absurd, that Mrs. Mansfield knew, even suspected,
+nothing. But unfortunately she was a woman and, therefore, obliged to be
+horribly intelligent in certain directions. Her painted cheeks and
+delicately-darkened eyelashes had spoken what her lips had never said.
+It was vain to pretend the contrary. And she sedulously pretended it.
+
+Her sense of separation from her mother made Charmian the more desirous
+of further intercourse with Susan Fleet. She felt as if only Miss Fleet
+could help her, though how she did not know. After repeated attempts on
+her part a meeting was at last arranged, and one afternoon the
+Theosophist made her appearance in Berkeley Square and was shown
+upstairs to Charmian's little sitting-room.
+
+Charmian was playing a Polonaise of Chopin's on a cottage piano. She
+played fairly well, but not remarkably. She had been trained by a
+competent master and had a good deal of execution. But her playing
+lacked that grip and definite intention which are the blood and bone of
+a performance. Several people thought nevertheless that it was full of
+charm.
+
+"Oh, Susan!"--she stopped abruptly on a diminished seventh. "Come and
+sit here! May I?"
+
+She kissed the serene face, clasping the white-gloved hands with both of
+hers.
+
+"Another from Folkestone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What a fit! I simply must go there. D'you like my little room?"
+
+Susan looked quietly round, examining the sage-green walls, the
+water-colors, the books in Florentine bindings, the chairs and sofas
+covered with chintz, which showed a bold design of purple grapes with
+green leaves, the cream-colored rough curtains, and Charmian's
+dachshund, Caroline, who lay awake before the small fire which burned in
+a grate lined with Morris tiles.
+
+"Yes, I like it very much. It looks like your home and as if you were
+fond of it."
+
+"I am, so far as one can be fond of a room."
+
+She paused, hesitating, thinking of the little island and her sudden
+outburst, longing to return at once to the subject which secretly
+obsessed her, yet fearing to seem childish, too egoistic, perhaps
+naively indiscreet. Susan looked at her with a friendly gaze.
+
+"How are things going with you? Are you happier than you were at
+Mustapha?"
+
+"You mean--about that?"
+
+"I'm afraid you have been worrying."
+
+"Do I look uglier?" cried Charmian, almost with sharpness.
+
+Susan Fleet could not help smiling, but in her smile there was no
+sarcasm, only a gentle, tolerant humor.
+
+"I hardly know. People say my ideas about looks are all crazy. I can't
+admire many so-called beauties, you see. There's more expression in your
+face, I think. But I don't know that I should call it happy expression."
+
+"I wish I were like you. I wish I could feel indifferent to happiness!"
+
+"I don't suppose I am indifferent. Only I don't feel that every small
+thing of to-day has power over me, any more than I feel that a grain of
+dust which I can flick from my dress makes me unclean. It's a long
+journey we are making. And I always think it's a great mistake to fuss
+on a journey."
+
+"I don't know anyone who can give me what you do," said Charmian.
+
+"It's a long journey up the Ray," said Susan.
+
+"The Ray?" said Charmian, seized with a sense of mystery.
+
+"The bridge that leads from the personal which perishes to the immortal
+which endures."
+
+"I can't help loving the personal. I'm not like you. I do love the
+feeling of definite personality, separated from everything, mine, me.
+It's no use pretending."
+
+"Pretence is always disgusting."
+
+"Yes, of course. But still--never mind, I was only going to say
+something you wouldn't agree with."
+
+Susan did not ask what it was, but quietly turned the conversation, and
+soon succeeded in ridding Charmian of her faint self-consciousness.
+
+"I want you to meet--him."
+
+At last Charmian had said it, with a slight flush.
+
+"I have met him," returned Miss Fleet, in her powerful voice.
+
+"What!" cried Charmian, on an almost indignant note.
+
+"I met him last night."
+
+"How could you? Where? He never goes to anything!"
+
+"I went with Adelaide to the Elgar Concert at Queen's Hall. He was there
+with a musical critic, and happened to be next to us."
+
+Charmian looked very vexed and almost injured.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney--and you talked to him?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Adelaide introduced us."
+
+There was a silence. Then Charmian said:
+
+"I don't suppose he was his real self--with Adelaide Shiffney. But did
+you like him?"
+
+"I did. I thought him genuine. And one sees the spirit clearly in his
+face."
+
+"I'm sure he liked you."
+
+"I really don't know."
+
+"I do. Did he--did you--either of you say anything about me?"
+
+"Certainly we did."
+
+"Did he--did he seem--did you notice whether he was at all--? Caroline,
+be quiet!"
+
+The dachshund, who had shown signs of an intention to finish her reverie
+on Charmian's knees, blinked, looked guilty, lay down again, turned over
+on her left side with her back to her mistress, and heaved a sigh that
+nearly degenerated into a whimper.
+
+"I suppose he talked most of the time with Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+"Well, we had quite five minutes together. I spoke about our time at
+Mustapha."
+
+"Did he seem interested?"
+
+"Very much, I thought."
+
+"Very much! Oh, Susan! But he has a manner of seeming interested. It may
+not mean anything. But still I do think since I have come back he sees
+that I am not quite a nonentity. He has been here several times, for
+mother of course. Even now I have never heard his music. But there is a
+difference. I believe in such a place as London unless one has
+resolution to assert oneself people think one is a sort of shadow. I
+have so often thought of what you said about my perhaps having to learn
+through Claude Heath and to teach him, too. Sometimes when I look at him
+I feel it must be so. But what have I to teach? D'you know
+since--since--well, it makes me feel humble often. And yet I know that
+the greatest man needs help. Men are a sort of children. I've often been
+surprised by the childishness of really big men. Please tell me all he
+said to you."
+
+Very calmly Susan told. She had just finished, and Charmian was about to
+speak again, when Mrs. Mansfield opened the door. Charmian sprang up so
+abruptly that Caroline was startled into a husky bark.
+
+"Oh, Madre! Susan Fleet is here!"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield knew at once that she had broken in upon a confidential
+interview, not by Miss Fleet's demeanor, but by Charmian's. But she did
+not show her knowledge. She sat down and joined pleasantly in the talk.
+She had often seen Miss Fleet in London, but she did not know her well.
+At once she realized that Charmian had found an excellent friend. And
+she was not jealous because of the confidence given but not given to
+her. Youth, she knew, is wilful and must have its way. The nearest, for
+some inscrutable reason, are generally told the least.
+
+When Miss Fleet went away, Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"That is one of the most thoroughbred human beings I have ever seen. No
+wonder the greatest snobs like her. There is nothing a snob hates so
+much as snobbery in another. _Viva_ to your new friend, Charmian!"
+
+She wondered a little whether Miss Fleet's perception of character was
+as keen as her breeding was definite, when she heard that Claude Heath
+had met her.
+
+Heath told Mrs. Mansfield this. Miss Fleet had made a strong impression
+upon him. At the moment when he had met her he had felt specially
+downcast. The musical critic, with whom he had gone to the concert, had
+been a fellow student with him at the Royal College. Being young the
+critic was very critical, very sure of himself, very decisive in his
+worship of the new idols and in his scathing contempt for the old. He
+spoke of Mendelssohn as if the composer of _Elijah_ had earned undying
+shame, of Gounod as if he ought to have been hanged for creating his
+_Faust_. His glorification of certain modern impressionists in music
+depressed Heath, almost as much as his abuse of the dead who had been
+popular, and who were still appreciated by some thousands, perhaps
+millions, of nobodies. He made Heath, in his discontented condition,
+feel as if all art were futile.
+
+"Why give up everything," he thought, "merely to earn in the end the
+active contempt of men who have given up nothing? What is it that drives
+me on? A sort of madness, perhaps, something to be rooted out."
+
+He almost shivered as the conviction came to him that he must have been
+composing for posterity, since he did not desire present publicity. No
+doubt he had tried to trick himself into the belief that he had toiled
+for himself alone, paid the tribute of ardent work to his own soul. Now
+he asked himself, with bitter scepticism: "Does any man really ever do
+that?" And his world seemed to fall about him like shadows dropping down
+into a void.
+
+Then came his five minutes of talk with Susan Fleet.
+
+When Heath spoke of it to Mrs. Mansfield he said:
+
+"I was a cripple when we began. When we stopped I felt as if I could
+climb to a peak. And she said nothing memorable. But I had been in her
+atmosphere."
+
+"And you are very susceptible to atmosphere."
+
+"Too susceptible. That's why I keep so much to myself."
+
+"I know--the cloister."
+
+She looked at him earnestly, even searchingly. He slightly reddened,
+looked down, said slowly:
+
+"It's not a natural life, the life of the cloister."
+
+"Perhaps you mean to come out."
+
+"I don't know what I mean. I am all at a loose end lately."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+Her eyes were still on him.
+
+"I hardly know. Perhaps hearing about Africa, of that voyage I might
+have made, unsettled me. I'm a weakling, I'm afraid."
+
+"Very strong in one way."
+
+"Very weak in another, perhaps. It would have been better to go and have
+done with it, than to brood over not having gone."
+
+"You are envying Charmian?"
+
+"Some days I envy everyone who isn't Claude Heath," he answered
+evasively, with a little covering laugh. "Of one thing I am quite sure,
+that I wish I were a male Miss Fleet. She knows what few people know."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"What is small and what is great."
+
+"And you found that out in five minutes at a concert?"
+
+"Elgar's is music that helps the perceptions."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield's perceptions were very keen. Yet she was puzzled by
+Heath. She realized that he was disturbed and attributed that
+disturbance to Charmian. Had he suspected, or found out, that Charmian
+imagined herself to be in love with him? He came as usual to the house.
+His friendship with Mrs. Mansfield did not seem to her to have changed.
+But his relation to Charmian was not what it had been. Indeed, it was
+scarcely possible that it should be so. For Charmian had continued to be
+definite ever since her drastic remarks at dinner on the evening of her
+return. She bantered Heath, laughed at him, patronized him in the pretty
+way of a pretty London girl who takes the world for her own with the
+hands of youth. When she found him with her mother she did not glide
+away, or remain as a mere listener while they talked. She stayed to hold
+her own, sometimes even--so her mother thought, not without pathos--a
+little aggressively.
+
+Heath's curious and deep reserve, which underlay his apparent quick and
+sensitive readiness to be sympathetic with those about him, to give them
+what they wanted of him, was not abated by Charmian's banter, her
+delicate impertinences, her laughing attacks. Mrs. Mansfield noticed
+that. He turned to her still when he wished to speak for a moment out of
+his heart.
+
+But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred
+him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew
+how to involve him in eager arguments.
+
+One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said
+to Mrs. Mansfield:
+
+"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could
+concentrate. She has powers, you know."
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.
+
+"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?"
+she thought.
+
+She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised
+her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.
+
+"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they
+could see, we should have ten commandments to obey--perhaps twenty."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden
+Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new
+opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was
+unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first
+performance of this work, which was called _Le Paradis Terrestre_, the
+inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual
+excitement. Whispers went round that the new opera was quite
+extraordinary, epoch-making, that it was causing a prodigious impression
+at rehearsal, that it was absolutely original, that there was no doubt
+of its composer's genius. Then reports as to the composer's personality
+and habits began to get about. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, knew him. But
+she had introduced him to nobody. He was her personal prey at present.
+She, however, allowed it to be known that he was quite charming, but the
+strangest creature imaginable. It seemed that he had absolutely no moral
+sense, did not know what it meant. If he saw an insect trodden upon, or
+a fly killed on a window-pane, he could not work for days. But when his
+first wife--he had been married at sixteen--shot herself in front of
+him, on account of his persistent cruelty and infidelity, he showed no
+sign of distress, had the body carried out of his studio, and went on
+composing. Decidedly an original! Everybody was longing to know him. The
+libraries and the box-office of the Opera House were bombarded with
+demands for seats for the first performance, at which the beautiful
+Annie Meredith, singer, actress, dancer, speculator, and breeder of
+prize bulldogs, was to appear in the heroine's part.
+
+Three nights before the première, a friend, suddenly plunged into
+mourning by the death of a relation, sent Mrs. Mansfield her box.
+Charmian was overjoyed. Max Elliot, Lady Mildred Burnington, Margot and
+Kit Drake, Paul Lane, all her acquaintances, in fact, were already
+"raving" about Jacques Sennier, without knowing him, and about his
+opera, without having heard it. Sensation, success, they were in the
+air. Not to go to this première would be a disaster. Charmian's
+instinctive love of being "in" everything had caused her to feel acute
+vexation when her mother had told her that their application for stalls
+had been refused. Now, at the last moment, they had one of the best
+boxes in the house.
+
+"Whom shall we take?" said Mrs. Mansfield. "There's room for four."
+
+"Why not invite Mr. Heath?" said Charmian, with a rather elaborate
+carelessness. "As he's a musician it might interest him."
+
+"I will if you like. But he's sure to refuse."
+
+Of late Heath had retired into his shell. Mrs. Shiffney had not seen him
+for months. Max Elliot had given him up in despair. Even in Berkeley
+Square he was but seldom visible. His excuse for not calling was that he
+knew nobody had any time to spare in the season.
+
+"Don't write to him, Madre, or he will. Get him to come here and ask
+him. He really ought to follow the progress of his own art, silly
+fellow. I have no patience with his absurd fogeydom."
+
+She spoke with the lightest scorn, but in her long eyes there was an
+intentness which contradicted her manner.
+
+Heath came to the house, was invited to come to the box, and had just
+refused when Charmian entered the room.
+
+"You're afraid, Mr. Heath," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Afraid! What of?" he asked quickly, and a little defiantly.
+
+"Afraid of hearing what the foreign composers of your own age are doing,
+of comparing their talents with your own. That's so English! Never mind
+what the rest of the world is about! We'll go on in our own way! It
+seems so valiant, doesn't it? And really it's nothing but cowardice,
+fear of being forced to see that others are advancing while we are
+standing still. I'm sick of English stolidity!"
+
+Heath's eyes shown with something that looked like anger.
+
+"I really don't think I'm afraid!" he said stiffly.
+
+Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to
+the première with the Mansfields. It was a triumph for Charmian, but she
+did not show that she knew it.
+
+Heath was in his most reserved mood. He had the manner of the defiant
+male lured from behind his defenses into the open against his will. Some
+intelligence within him knew that his cold stiffness was rather
+ridiculous, and made him unhappy. Mrs. Mansfield was really sorry for
+him.
+
+Nothing is more humorously tragic than pleasure indulged in under
+protest. And Heath's protest was painfully apparent.
+
+Charmian, who was looking her best, her most self-possessed, a radiant
+minx, with fleeting hints of depths and softnesses, half veiled by the
+firm habit of the world, seemed to tower morally above the composer. He
+marvelled afresh at the triumphant composure of modern girlhood. Sitting
+between the two women in the box--no one else had been asked to join
+them--he looked out, almost shyly, at the crowded and brilliant house.
+Mrs. Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a
+box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul
+Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was
+covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine
+intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair. In the box
+next the stage on the same side were the Max Elliots with Sir Hilary
+Burnington and Lady Mildred.
+
+Charmian looked eagerly about the house, putting up her opera-glasses,
+finding everywhere friends and acquaintances. She frankly loved the
+world with the energy of her youth.
+
+At this moment the sight of the huge and crowded theater, full of
+watchful eyes and whispering lips, full of brains and souls waiting to
+be fed, the sound of its hum and stir, sent a warm thrill through her,
+thrill of expectation, of desire. She thought of that man, Jacques
+Sennier, hidden somewhere, the cause of all that was happening in the
+house, of all that would happen almost immediately upon the stage. She
+envied him with intensity. Then she looked at Claude Heath's rather grim
+and constrained expression. Was it possible that Heath did not share her
+feeling of envy?
+
+There was a tap at the door. Heath sprang up and opened it. Paul Lane's
+pale and discontented face appeared.
+
+"Halloa! Haven't seen you since that dinner! May I come in for a
+minute?"
+
+He spoke to the Mansfields.
+
+"Perfectly marvellous! Everyone behind the scenes is mad about it! Annie
+Meredith says she will make the success of her life in it. Who's that
+Frenchwoman with Adelaide Shiffney? Madame Sennier, the composer's
+wife--his second, the first killed herself. Very clever woman. She's not
+going to kill herself. Sennier says he could do nothing without her,
+never would have done this opera but for her. She found him the
+libretto, kept him at it, got the Covent Garden management interested in
+it, persuaded Annie Meredith to come over from South America to sing the
+part. An extraordinary woman, ugly, but a will of iron, and an ambition
+that can't be kept back. Her hour of triumph to-night. There goes the
+curtain."
+
+As Lane slipped out of the box, he whispered to Heath:
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney hopes you'll come and speak to her between the acts. Her
+name's on the door."
+
+Heath sat down a little behind Mrs. Mansfield. Although the curtain was
+now up he noticed that Charmian, with raised opera-glasses, was
+earnestly looking at Mrs. Shiffney's box. He noticed, too, that her left
+hand shook slightly, almost imperceptibly.
+
+"Her hour of triumph!" Yes, the hour proved to be that. Madame Sennier's
+energies had not been expended in vain. From the first bars of music,
+from the first actions upon the stage, the audience was captured by the
+new work. There was no hesitating. There were no dangerous moments. The
+evening was like a crescendo, admirably devised and carried out. And
+through it all Charmian watched the ugly white face of the red-haired
+woman opposite to her, lived imaginatively in that woman's heart and
+brain, admired her, almost hated her, longed to be what she was.
+
+Between the acts she saw men pouring into Mrs. Shiffney's box. And every
+one was presented to the ugly woman, whose vivacity and animation were
+evidently intense, who seemed to demand homage as a matter of course.
+Several foreigners kissed her hand. Max Elliot's whole attitude, as he
+bent over her, showed adoration and enthusiasm. Even Paul Lane was
+smiling, as he drew her attention to a glove split by his energy in
+applause.
+
+Heath had spoken of Mrs. Shiffney's message. He was evidently reluctant
+to obey it, but Charmian insisted on his going.
+
+"I want to know what Madame Sennier is like. You must ask her if she is
+happy, find out how happy she is."
+
+"Charmian, Mr. Heath isn't a mental detective!"
+
+"I speak such atrocious French!" said Heath, looking nervous and
+miserable.
+
+"I suppose you can say, '_Chère Madame, j'espère que vous étes bien
+contente ce soir_?'"
+
+When Heath had left the box Mrs. Mansfield said gravely to her daughter:
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+"Yes, Madretta."
+
+"I don't think you are behaving very kindly this evening. You scarcely
+seem to remember that Mr. Heath is our guest."
+
+"Against his will," she said, in a voice that was almost hard. There was
+a hardness, too, in her whole look and manner.
+
+"I think that only makes the hostess's obligation the stronger," said
+Mrs. Mansfield. "I don't at all like the Margot manner with men."
+
+"I'm sorry, Madre; but I had no idea I was imitating Margot Drake."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield said no more. Charmian, with flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes, turned to look once more at Adelaide Shiffney's box.
+
+In about three minutes she saw Mrs. Shiffney glance behind her. Max
+Elliot, who was still with her, got up and opened the door, and Heath
+stood in the background. Charmian frowned and pressed her little teeth
+on her lower lip. Her body felt stiff with attention, with scrutiny. She
+saw Heath come forward, Max Elliot holding him by the arm, and talking
+eagerly and smiling. Mrs. Shiffney smiled, too, laughed, gave him her
+powerful hand. Now he was being introduced to Madame Sennier, who surely
+appraised him with one swift, almost cruelly intelligent glance.
+
+His French! His French! Charmian trembled for it, for him because of it.
+If Mrs. Mansfield could have known how solicitous, how tender, how
+motherly, the girl felt at that moment under her mask of shining,
+radiant hardness! But Mrs. Mansfield was glancing about the house with
+grave and even troubled eyes.
+
+Heath was talking to Madame Sennier. He was even sitting down beside
+her. She spoke, evidently with volubility, making rapid gestures with
+her hands. Then she paused. She was listening attentively to Heath. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Elliot listened, too, as if absorbed. Heath's French must
+really be excellent. Why had he--? If only she could hear what he was
+saying! She tingled with curiosity. How he held them, those three
+people! From here he looked distinguished, interesting. He stood out
+even in this crowd as an interesting man. Madame Sennier made an upward
+movement of her head, full of will. She put out her hand, and laid it on
+Heath's arm. Now they all seemed to be talking together. Madame Sennier
+looked radiant, triumphant, even autocratic. She pointed toward the
+stage emphatically, made elaborate descriptive movements with her hands.
+A bell sounded somewhere. Heath got up. In a moment he and Max Elliot
+had left the box together. The two women were alone. They leaned toward
+each other apparently in earnest conversation.
+
+"I know they are talking about him! I know they are!"
+
+Charmian actually formed the words with her lips. The curtain rose as
+Heath quietly entered the box. Charmian did not turn to him or look at
+him then. Only when the act was over did she move and say:
+
+"Well, Mr. Heath, your French evidently comes at call."
+
+"What--oh, we were talking in English!"
+
+"Madame Sennier speaks English?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Excellently!"
+
+Charmian felt disappointed.
+
+"Is she happy?" she asked, moving her hand on the edge of the box.
+
+"She seems so."
+
+"Did you tell her what you thought?"
+
+"Yes," said Heath.
+
+His voice had become suddenly deeper, more expressive.
+
+"I told her that I thought it wonderful. And so it is. She said--in
+French this: 'Ah, my friend, wait till the last act. Then it is no
+longer the earthly Paradise!'"
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then Charmian said, in a voice that
+sounded rather dry:
+
+"You liked her?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes, I think I did. We were all rather carried away, I
+suppose."
+
+"Carried away! By what?"
+
+"Well, it is evidently a great moment in Madame Sennier's life. One must
+sympathize."
+
+Charmian looked and saw two spots of color burning high up on his
+cheeks. His voice had suddenly quivered.
+
+"I should think so," said Mrs. Mansfield. "This evening probably means
+more to Madame Sennier even than to her husband."
+
+Charmian said nothing more till the end of the evening. Beneath the
+radiant coolness of her demeanor, the air of triumphant self-possession,
+she was secretly quivering with excitement. She feared to betray
+herself. Soon she was spellbound by the music of the last act and by the
+wonderful performance of Annie Meredith. As she listened, leaning
+forward in the box, and always feeling intensely the nearness to her of
+Heath, and of Heath's strong musical talent, she remembered something
+she had once said in the drawing-room in Berkeley Square, "We want a new
+note." Here was the new note in French music, the new talent given to
+the wondering and delighted world to-night. To-morrow doubtless Europe
+and America would know that the husband of the red-haired woman opposite
+had taken his place among the famous men to whom the world must pay
+attention. From to-morrow thousands of art lovers would be looking
+toward Jacques Sennier with expectation, the curious expectation of
+those who crave for fresh food on which they may feed their intellects,
+and their souls. The great tonic of a new development in art was
+offered to all those who cared to take it by the man who would probably
+be staring from behind the footlights at the crowd in a few moments.
+
+If only the new note had been English!
+
+"It shall be! It shall be!" Charmian repeated to herself.
+
+She looked again and again at Madame Sennier, striving to grasp the
+secret of her will for another, even while she gave herself to the
+enchantment of the music. But for that woman in all probability the
+music would never have been given life. Somewhere, far down in the
+mystery of an individual, it would have lain, corpse-like. A woman had
+willed that it should live. She deserved the homage she had received,
+and would receive to-night. For she had made her man do a great thing,
+because she had helped him to understand his own greatness.
+
+Suddenly, out of the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the
+music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to
+detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the
+Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so
+now she seemed to be aware that the future would show a brilliant crowd
+assembled in some great theater, not for Jacques Sennier, but for one
+near her. Really she was violently willing that it should be so. But she
+thought she was receiving--from whom, or from what, she could not
+tell--a mysterious message.
+
+And the red-haired woman's place was filled by another.
+
+At last the curtain fell on the final scene, and the storm which meant a
+triumph was unchained. Heath sprang up from his seat, carried away by a
+generous enthusiasm. He did not know how to be jealous of anyone who
+could do a really fine thing. Charmian, in the midst of the uproar,
+heard him shouting "Bravo!" behind her, in a voice quick with
+excitement. His talent was surely calling to a brother. The noise all
+over the house strengthened gradually, then abruptly rose like a great
+wave. A small, thin, and pale man, with a big nose, a mighty forehead,
+scanty black hair and beard, and blinking eyes, had stepped out before
+the curtain. He leaned forward, made a movement as if to retreat, was
+stopped by a louder roar, stepped quickly to the middle of the small
+strip of stage that was visible, and stood still with his big head
+slightly thrust out toward the multitude which acclaimed him.
+
+Charmian turned round to Claude Heath, who towered above her. He did not
+notice her movement. He was gazing at the stage while he violently
+clapped his hands. She gazed up at him. He felt her eyes, leaned down.
+For a moment they looked at each other, while the noise in the house
+increased. Claude saw that Charmian wanted to speak to him--and
+something else. After a moment, during which the blood rose in his
+cheeks and forehead, and he felt as if he were out in wind and rain, in
+falling snow and stern sunshine, he said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be--for you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In the studio of Mullion House that night, Harriet, moving softly,
+placed a plate of sandwiches and a long bottle of Rhine wine before she
+went up to bed. Moonlight shone on the scrap of garden, gleamed on the
+leaded panes of the studio windows, from which the orange-colored
+curtains were drawn back. The aspect of the big room had changed because
+it was summer. It looked bigger, less cosy without a fire. One lamp was
+lighted and cast a gentle glow over the books that lay near it, and over
+the writing-table on which there were sheets of manuscript music. The
+piano stood open. A spray of white roses in a tall vase looked spectral
+against the shadows. After Harriet's departure the clock ticked for a
+long time in an empty room.
+
+It was nearly two o'clock, and the moon was waning, when the studio door
+was opened to let in Heath. He was alone. Holding the door with one
+hand, he stood and stared at the room, examined it with a sort of
+excited and close attention. Then he took off his hat, shut the door,
+laid hat and coat on the sofa, went to the table where Harriet had put
+the tray, and poured out a glass of wine. He sighed, looked at the gold
+of the wine, made beautiful by the lamplight, drank it, and sat down in
+the worn armchair which faced the line of window. Then he lit a cigar,
+leaned back, and smoked, keeping his eyes on the glass.
+
+Upon the leaded panes the faint silver shifted, faded, and presently
+died. Heath watched, and thought, "The moon gone!" He did not feel as if
+he could ever wish to sleep again. The excitement within him was like a
+ravaging disease. He was capable of excitement that never comes to the
+ordinary man, although he took sedulous care to hide that fact. His
+imagination bristled like a spear held by one alert for attack. What was
+life going to do to him? What was he going to let it do?
+
+Charmian Mansfield loved him, and believed in his genius, as he did not
+believe, or had not till now believed in it. He was loved, he was
+believed in, by the thin mystery of a modern girl, who had known many
+men with talents, with names, with big reputations. Under that
+triumphant composure, that almost cruel banter, that whimsical airy
+contempt, that cool frivolity of the minx, there was emotion, there was
+love for him and for his talent. Always that night he thought of his
+talent in connection with Charmian's love, he scarcely knew why. For how
+long had she loved him? And why did she love him? He thought of his
+body, and it surprised him that she loved that. He thought of his mind,
+his imagination, his temper, his tricks, his faults, his habits. He
+thought of his deep reserve, and of the intense emotion he sometimes
+felt when he was quite alone and composing. Sometimes he felt like a
+great fire then. Sometimes he felt brutal, almost savage, decisive in a
+sense that was surely cruel. Did she suspect all that? Did she love all
+that without consciously suspecting it? Sometimes, when he had been
+working very hard, overworking perhaps, he felt inclined to do evil. If
+she knew that!
+
+But she did not, she could not know him. Why, then, did she love him?
+Heath was not a conceited man, but he did not at this moment doubt
+Charmian's love for him. Though he was sometimes child-like, and could
+be, like most men, very blind, he had a keen intellect which could
+reason about psychology. He knew how women love success. He knew how, in
+a moment of excitement such as that at the end of the opera, when
+Jacques Sennier came before the curtain, they instinctively concentrate
+on the man who has made the success. He knew, or divined, what woman's
+concentration is. And he realized the bigness of the tribute paid to him
+by Charmian's abrupt detachment from the hour and the man, by the sweep
+of her brain and her heart to him. Any conqueror of women might have
+been proud of such a tribute, have considered it rare. Her eyes, her
+voice, in the tempest they had thrilled him. He had been only thinking
+of Sennier's music and of Sennier, of art and the human being behind it.
+Nothing within him had consciously called to Charmian. Nor had there--he
+felt sure now--been the unconscious call sent out by the man of talent
+who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy
+voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been
+wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her,
+to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred
+out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by an impulse.
+
+"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be for you."
+
+She had only whispered the words, but they had seemed to stab him, with
+so much mental force had she sent them out. Mrs. Mansfield had not heard
+them. And how extraordinary Charmian's eyes had been during that moment
+when she and he had gazed at one another. He had not known eyes could
+look like that, as if the whole spirit of a human being were crouching
+in them, intent. How far away from the eyes the human spirit must often
+be!
+
+As Heath thought of Charmian's eyes he felt as if he knew very little of
+real life yet.
+
+She had turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He
+had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a
+splendid rôle. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily,
+but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the
+beautiful. He--Heath--had stood upright again, had gone on applauding
+with the rest. But his thoughts had then all been on himself. "If all
+this were for me! If I should ever have such an hour in my life, such a
+tribute as this! If within me is the capacity to conquer all these
+diverse natures and temperaments, to weld them together in a common
+desire, the desire to show thankfulness for what a man has been able to
+give them!" And he had thrilled for the first time with a fierce new
+longing, the longing for the best that is meant by fame.
+
+This longing persisted now.
+
+Heath had left Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian under the arcade of the Opera
+House, after putting them into their car. The crush coming out had been
+great. They had had to wait for nearly half an hour in the vestibule.
+During that time the Mansfields had talked to many friends. Charmian
+had completely regained her composure. She had introduced Heath to
+several people, among others to Kit and Margot Drake, who spoke of
+nothing but the opera and its composer and Annie Meredith. The vestibule
+was full of the voices of praise. Everybody seemed unusually excited.
+Paul Lane had actually come up to them with beads of perspiration
+standing on his forehead, and his eyes shining with excitement.
+
+"This is a red-letter night in my life," he had said. "I have felt a
+strong and genuine emotion. There's a future for music, after all, and a
+big one. If only there were one or two more Jacques Senniers!"
+
+Even then Charmian had not looked again at Heath. She had answered
+lightly.
+
+"Perhaps there are. Who knows? Even Monsieur Sennier was practically
+unknown four hours ago."
+
+"There are not many parts of the civilized world in which his name will
+be unknown in four days from now," said Paul Lane, "or even in
+twenty-four hours. I'm going to meet him and his wife at supper at
+Adelaide Shiffney's, so I must say good-night--oh, and good-night, Mr.
+Heath."
+
+Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath.
+
+Claude had walked all the way home alone slowly. He had passed through
+Piccadilly Circus, through Regent Street, through Oxford Street, along
+the north side of the closed and deserted Park on which the faint
+moonlight lay. When he reached his door he had not gone in. He had
+turned, had paced up and down. The sight of a very large policeman
+looking attentive, then grimly inquiring, then crudely suspicious, had
+finally decided him to enter his house.
+
+What was life going to do to him if he did not hold back, did not
+persist any longer in his mania for refusal? There was a new world
+spread out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into
+it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated,
+was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
+wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
+him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
+said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
+whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
+instinct of self-preservation."
+
+What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?
+
+Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
+greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
+what he had to say about her husband's opera.
+
+"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
+he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
+full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."
+
+Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?
+
+Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
+he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
+action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
+leap.
+
+He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
+manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
+But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
+beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
+something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
+forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
+He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
+refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
+this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
+crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
+remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
+passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
+a restricted light.
+
+The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
+he lusted for fame.
+
+Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."
+
+Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
+something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
+surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed
+venom, and that she alone could supply it.
+
+The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew
+nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
+force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
+was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
+have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
+greatness.
+
+He loved her just then for that.
+
+"Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath."
+
+Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.
+
+Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
+room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
+dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
+his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
+inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
+Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
+reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
+atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
+opera here. In vain to try.
+
+With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
+snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
+across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
+futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
+unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
+bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
+resolved to have done with it.
+
+Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
+down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
+but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
+whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
+known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
+ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
+the instinct of love.
+
+He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
+even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
+guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
+blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
+it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.
+
+In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
+eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
+silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
+of the night falling toward the arms of dawn.
+
+Claude walked swiftly on, turned the corner, and came into the
+thoroughfare which skirts Kensington Gardens and the Park. Some fifty
+yards away there was a letter box. He hurried toward it, driven on by
+defiance of that within him which would fain have held him back, by the
+blind instinct to trample which sometimes takes hold of a strong and
+emotional nature in a moment of unusual excitement.
+
+"The great refuser! No, I'll not be that any longer."
+
+As he drew near to the letter box he felt that till now he had been a
+composer. Henceforth he would be a man. He had lived for an art.
+Henceforth he would live for life, and would make life feel his art.
+
+He dropped his letter into the box.
+
+In falling out of his sight it made a faint, uneasy noise.
+
+Claude stood there like one listening.
+
+The grayness seemed to grow slightly more livid over the tree-tops and
+behind the branches. The letter did not speak again. So he thought of
+that tiny noise, as the speech of the dropping letter. It must have slid
+down against the side of the box. Now it was lying still. There was
+nothing more for him to do but to go home. Yet he waited before the
+letter box, with his eyes fixed upon the small white plaque on which was
+printed the time of the next delivery--eight-forty A.M.
+
+Was it the sound, or was it the movement preceding the sound, which had
+worked a cold change in his heart? He felt almost stunned by what he had
+done, like a man who strikes and sees the result of his blow, who has
+not measured its force, and sees his victim measure it. Eight-forty
+A.M.
+
+A step sounded. He looked, and saw in the distance the large policeman
+slowly advancing.
+
+When he was again in his house he closed the front door softly, and went
+once more to the studio. He looked round it, examining the familiar
+objects: the piano, his work table, the books, the deep, well-worn,
+homely chairs, the rugs which Mrs. Mansfield had liked. On the floor, by
+his table, lay the fragments of manuscript music. How had he come to
+tear it, his last composition?
+
+He went over to the window, opened a square of the glass, sat down on
+the window-seat, and looked out to the tiny garden. A faint smell, as of
+dewy earth, rose from it, fresh, delicate, and--somehow--pathetic. As
+Claude leaned on the window-sill this frail scent, which seemed part of
+the dying night, connected itself in his mind with his past life. He
+drew it in through his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
+floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
+making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
+guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
+a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
+himself?
+
+The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
+at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
+written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
+He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
+brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
+feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
+given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
+broken with the old life.
+
+At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
+would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
+probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face--a feeling of desperation
+seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
+that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
+clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
+to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
+words. The thought of Madame Sennier and all she had done for her
+husband had winged his pen.
+
+The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
+had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
+poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
+No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
+in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
+this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
+impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
+mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
+little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
+carried him away in the theater.
+
+Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
+was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
+never written that letter of love to Charmian.
+
+The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
+fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
+looked at them, and thought:
+
+"If only my letter lay there instead!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
+Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
+strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
+of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
+possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.
+
+For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
+Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
+Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
+feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:
+
+"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
+Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
+by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"
+
+Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
+door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.
+
+Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
+Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
+life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
+fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
+to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
+she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
+ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
+emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
+laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
+with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
+not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.
+
+The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
+Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.
+
+Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
+Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
+obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
+almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
+so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
+an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
+life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
+change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
+be divorced from him. An atmosphere had enfolded him, had become as it
+were part of him, drowning his life in its peculiar influence. He must
+emerge from it. But he would never be able to emerge from it in the
+little old house which he loved. So he got rid of his lease, with
+Charmian's acquiescence.
+
+She did not really want to live on the north side of the Park. And the
+neighborhood was "Bayswatery." But she guessed that Claude was not quite
+happy in deserting his characteristic roof-tree, and she eagerly sought
+for another. It was found in Kensington Square. Several interesting and
+even famous persons lived there. The houses were old, not large,
+compact. They had a "flavor" of culture, which set them apart from the
+new and mushroom dwellings of London, and from all flats whatsoever.
+They were suitable to "artistic" people. A great actress, much sought
+after in the social world, had lived for years in this square. A famous
+musician was opposite to her. A baronet, who knew how to furnish, and
+whose wife gave delightful small parties, was next door but three. A
+noted novelist had just moved there from a flat in Queen Anne's
+Mansions. In fact, there was a cachet on Kensington Square.
+
+And though it was rather far out, you can go almost anywhere in ten
+minutes if you can afford to take a taxi-cab. Charmian and Claude had
+fifteen hundred a year between them. She had no doubt of their being
+able to take taxi-cabs on such an income. And, later on, of course
+Claude would make a lot of money. Jacques Sennier's opera was bringing
+him in thousands of pounds, and he had received great offers for future
+works from America, where _Le Paradis Terrestre_ had just made a furore
+at the Metropolitan Opera House. He and Madame Sennier were in New York
+now, having a more than lovely time. The generous American nation had
+taken them both to its heart. Charmian had read several accounts of
+their triumphs, artistic and social, in English newspapers. She had said
+to herself "Ours presently!" And with renewed and vital energy, she had
+devoted herself afresh to the task of "getting into" the new house.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had helped her, with sober love and devotion.
+
+Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the
+ceremony of hanging the _crémaillère_ was being duly accomplished.
+
+The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends.
+Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life,
+had wished that it should be so. His few intimates in London were not in
+the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
+Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
+other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
+always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
+Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
+people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.
+
+And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
+could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
+of whom it was old.
+
+Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
+mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
+in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
+Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
+in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
+Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
+who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
+flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
+Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
+desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
+honorable conduct, her anxiety about his future with her child, her
+painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
+girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
+of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
+through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
+the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
+strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
+great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
+people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
+youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
+have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
+seemed to her that she could not.
+
+She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
+Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
+through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
+affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.
+
+So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She alone
+knew whether pride helped her, perhaps had helped to prompt her, to
+reticence, to concealment. She had been Claude Heath's great friend. The
+jealousies of women are strong. She knew herself free from jealousy. But
+another woman, even her own daughter, might misunderstand. It was bitter
+to think so, but she did think so. And her lips were sealed. Beneath the
+more human fears in her crouched a fear that seemed apart, almost
+curiously isolated and very definite, the fear for Claude Heath's
+strange talent.
+
+On the night of the house-warming, as they sat together hearing the
+laughter, the buzz of talk, from those near them; as, a moment later,
+they heard those sounds diminish upon the narrow staircase, when
+everybody but themselves trooped down gaily to "play with a little food
+unceremoniously," as Charmian expressed it, Mrs. Mansfield found herself
+thinking of her first visit to the big studio in Mullion House, and of
+those Kings of the East whom the man beside her had made to live in her
+warm imagination.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said, when the human sounds in the house came up
+from under their feet.
+
+"From to-morrow!" she answered, looking at him with her strong, intense
+eyes.
+
+"From to-morrow--yes, Madre?"
+
+She put her thin and firm hand on his.
+
+"Life begins again, the life of work put off for a time. To-morrow you
+take it up once more."
+
+"Yes--yes!"
+
+He glanced about the pretty room, listened to the noise of the gaieties
+below them. Distinctly he heard Max Elliot's genial laugh.
+
+"Of course," he said. "I must start again on something. The question is,
+what on?"
+
+"Surely you have something in hand?"
+
+"I had. But--well, I've left it for so long that I don't know whether I
+could get back into the mood which enabled me to start it. I don't
+believe I could somehow. I think it would be best to begin on something
+quite fresh."
+
+"You know that. Do you think you will like the new workroom?"
+
+"Charmian has made it very pretty and cozy," he answered.
+
+His imaginative eyes looked suddenly distressed, almost persecuted, and
+he raised his eyebrows.
+
+"She is very clever at creating prettiness around her," he continued,
+after an instant of silence, during which Mrs. Mansfield looked down.
+"It is quite wonderful. And how energetic she is!"
+
+"Yes, Charmian can be very energetic when she likes. Adelaide Shiffney
+never turned up to-night."
+
+"She telegraphed this morning that she had to go over unexpectedly to
+Paris. Something to do with the Senniers probably. You know how devoted
+she is to him. And now he is the rage in America, Charmian says. Every
+day I expect to hear that Mrs. Shiffney had sailed for New York."
+
+He laughed, but not quite naturally.
+
+"What a change in his life that evening at Covent Garden made!" he
+added.
+
+"And what a change in yours!" was Mrs. Mansfield's thought.
+
+"He found himself, as people call it, on that night, I suppose," she
+said. "He is one of those men with a talent made for the great public.
+And he knew it, perhaps, for the first time that night. He is launched
+now on his destined career."
+
+"You believe in destiny?"
+
+She detected the sadness she had surprised in his eyes in his voice now.
+
+"Perhaps in our making of it."
+
+"Rather than in some great Power's imposing of it upon us?"
+
+"Ah, it's so difficult to know! When I was a child we had a game we
+loved. We went into a large room which was pitch dark. A person was
+hidden in it who had a shilling. Whichever child found that person had
+the shilling. There were terror and triumph in that game. It was
+scarcely like a game, it roused our feelings so strongly."
+
+"It is not everyone's destiny to find the holder of the shilling," said
+Claude.
+
+For a moment their eyes met. Claude suddenly reddened.
+
+"Have I? Does she suspect? Does she know?" went through his mind. And
+even Mrs. Mansfield felt embarrassed. For in that moment it was as if
+they had spoken to each other with a terrible frankness despite the
+silence of their lips.
+
+"Shan't we go down?" said Claude. "Surely you want something to eat,
+Madre?"
+
+"No, really. And I like a quiet talk with my new son."
+
+He said nothing, but she saw the strong affection in his face, lighting
+it, and she knew Claude loved her almost as a son may love a perfect
+mother. She wished that she dared to trust that love completely. But the
+instinctive reserve of the highly civilized held her back. And she only
+said:
+
+"You must not let marriage interfere too much with your work, Claude. I
+care very much for that. For years your work was everything to you. It
+can't be that, it oughtn't to be that now. But I want your marriage with
+Charmian to help, not to hinder you. Be true to your own instinct in
+your art and surely all must go well."
+
+"Yes, yes. To-morrow I must make a fresh start. I could never be an
+idler. I must--I must try to use life as food for my art!"
+
+He was speaking out his thought of the night when he wrote his letter to
+Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.
+
+"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
+the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
+Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."
+
+She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.
+
+"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
+well?"
+
+He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
+his lack of love for her daughter.
+
+For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
+with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
+felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
+not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
+vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
+marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
+honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
+mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
+to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
+suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
+his right dealing rewarded beautifully.
+
+It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
+become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
+And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
+the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
+with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
+salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
+her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
+who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
+of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
+them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
+things in his life work together for good.
+
+"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.
+
+When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
+before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first
+drawing-room.
+
+"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
+aren't sleepy, are you?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.
+
+"It went off well, didn't it?"
+
+She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were
+clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a
+yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it
+looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her
+face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.
+
+"Yes, I think it did."
+
+"They all liked you."
+
+"I'm glad!"
+
+"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
+You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or
+not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like
+yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max
+Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"
+
+Her voice had suddenly changed.
+
+"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not
+without surprise.
+
+"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of
+her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after
+accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she
+rushed off to Paris like that?"
+
+"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max
+Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."
+
+Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.
+
+"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather
+silly--in a man."
+
+"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."
+
+"I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with
+her rages first for this person and then for the other."
+
+"Who is it now?"
+
+"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."
+
+"Still?"
+
+"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I
+believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days
+out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put
+in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about
+her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"
+
+"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"
+said Claude, with a sort of still decision.
+
+Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.
+
+"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.
+
+"Why? In what way am I odd?"
+
+"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."
+
+"What do you mean, Charmian?"
+
+"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You
+are."
+
+She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession,
+something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very
+restive and intensely reserved.
+
+"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are. I know."
+
+His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a
+rush of words.
+
+"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with
+those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part
+of themselves."
+
+"Do women?"
+
+"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."
+
+There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a
+cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation possessed him, the undressed
+sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to
+himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to
+me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as
+if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do
+something to stop it.
+
+"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette
+in his mouth.
+
+She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.
+
+"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work
+to-morrow."
+
+She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had
+been.
+
+Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the
+drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion
+House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat
+writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze,
+dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the
+back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At
+the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury
+held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was
+dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious
+Morris tiles, representing Æneas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in
+the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in
+dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It
+showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out
+with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the assumed dreaminess
+which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs,
+the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a
+charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"
+
+"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"
+
+"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to Madre only this
+evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around
+you."
+
+"Were you? How nice of you."
+
+She laid her cheek against his shoulder.
+
+"You'll be able to work here?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Let's shut the door, and just _feel_ the room for a minute."
+
+"All right."
+
+He shut the door.
+
+"Don't let us speak for a moment," she whispered.
+
+She was sitting now on the deep sofa just beyond the writing-table.
+Claude stood quite still. And in the silence which followed her words he
+strove to realize whether he would be able to work in the little room.
+Would anything come to him here? His eyes rested on Anchises, crouched
+on the back of his son, on the burning city of Troy. He felt confused,
+strange, and then _dépaysé_. That word alone meant what he felt just
+then. Ah, the little house with the one big room looking out on to the
+scrap of garden, yellow-haired Fan, Harriet discreet unto dumbness, Mrs.
+Searle with her scraps of wisdom--he with his freedom!
+
+The room was a cage, wire bars everywhere. Never could he work in it!
+
+"It is good for work, isn't it, Claudie? Even poor little I can feel
+that. What wonderful things you are going to do here. As wonderful as--"
+She checked herself abruptly.
+
+"As what?" he asked, striving to force an interest, to banish his secret
+desperation.
+
+"I won't tell you now. Some day--in a year, two years--I'll tell you."
+
+Her eyes shone. He thought they looked almost greedy.
+
+"When my man's done something wonderful!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+In Charmian's conception of the perfect helpmate for a great man
+self-sacrifice shone out as the first of the virtues. She must sacrifice
+herself to Claude, must regulate her life so that his might glide
+smoothly, without any friction, to the appointed goal. She must be
+patient, understanding, and unselfish. But she must also be firm at the
+right moment, be strong in judgment, be judicious, the perfect critic as
+well as the ardent admirer. During her life among clever and well-known
+men she had noticed how the mere fact of marriage often seems to make a
+man think highly of the intellect of his chosen woman. Again and again
+she had heard some distinguished writer or politician, wedded to
+somebody either quite ordinary, or even actually stupid, say: "I'd take
+my wife's judgment before anyone's," or "My wife sees more clearly for a
+man than anyone I know." She had known painters and sculptors submit
+their works to the criticism of women totally ignorant in the arts,
+simply because those women had had the faultless taste to marry them. If
+such women exercised so strong an influence over their men, what should
+hers be over Claude? For she had been well educated, was trained in
+music, had always moved in intellectual and artistic sets, and was
+certainly not stupid. Indeed, now that the main stream of her life was
+divided from her mother's, she often felt as if she were decidedly
+clever. Susan Fleet, long ago, had roused up her will. Since that day
+she had never let it sleep. And her success in marrying Claude had made
+her rely on her will, rely on herself. She was a girl who could "carry
+things through," a girl who could make of life a success. As a young
+married woman she showed more of assurance than she had showed as an
+unmarried girl. There was more of decision in her expression and her way
+of being. She was resolved to impress the world, of course for her
+husband's sake.
+
+Life in the house in Kensington had to be arranged for Claude with
+every elaborate precaution. That must be the first move in the campaign
+secretly planned out by Charmian, and now about to be carried through.
+
+On the morning after the house-warming, when a late breakfast was
+finished, but while they were still at the breakfast-table in the long
+and narrow dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square, Charmian
+said to her husband:
+
+"I've been speaking to the servants, Claude. I've told them about being
+very quiet to-day."
+
+He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "I mean why specially to-day?"
+
+"Because of your composing. Alice is a good girl, but she is a little
+inclined to be noisy sometimes. I've spoken to her seriously about it."
+
+Alice was the parlor-maid. Charmian would have preferred to have a man
+to answer the door, but she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she
+had done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said nothing, Charmian
+continued:
+
+"And another thing! I've told them all that you're never to be disturbed
+when you're in your own room, that they're never to come to you with
+notes, or the post, never to call you to the telephone. I want you to
+feel that once you are inside your own room you are absolutely safe,
+that it is sacred ground."
+
+"Thank you, Charmian."
+
+He pushed his cup farther away, with a movement that was rather brusque,
+and got up.
+
+"What about lunch to-day? Do you eat lunch when you are composing? Do
+you want something sent up to you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall want any lunch to-day. You
+see we've breakfasted late. Don't bother about me."
+
+"It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie. But would you like a cup of
+coffee, tea, anything at one o'clock?"
+
+"Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do."
+
+He made a movement. Charmian got up.
+
+"I do long to know what you are going to work on," she said, in a
+changed, almost mysterious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.
+
+She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"Ever since I first heard your music--you remember, two days after we
+were engaged--I've longed to be able to do a little something to help
+you on. You know what I mean. In the woman's way, by acting as a sort of
+buffer between you and all the small irritations of life. We who can't
+create can sometimes be of use to those who can. We can keep others from
+disturbing the mystery. Let me do that. And, in return, let me be in the
+secret, won't you?"
+
+Claude stood rather stiffly under her hands.
+
+"You are kind, good. But--but don't make any bother about me in the
+house. I'd rather you didn't. Let everything just go on naturally. I
+don't want to be a nuisance."
+
+"You couldn't be. And you will let me?"
+
+"Perhaps--when I know it myself."
+
+He made a little rather constrained laugh.
+
+"One's got to think, try. One doesn't always know directly what one
+wishes to do, can do."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+She took away her hands gently.
+
+"Now I don't exist till you want me to again."
+
+Claude went up to the little room at the back of the house. At this
+moment he would gladly, thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
+that he was expected to go there. Five women, his wife and the four
+maids, expected him to go there. So he went. He shut himself in, and
+remained there, caged.
+
+It was a still and foggy day of frost. In the air, even within the
+house, there was a feeling of snow, light, thin, and penetrating. London
+seemed peculiarly silent. And the silence seemed to have something to do
+with the fog, the frost, and the coming snow. When the door of his room
+was shut Claude stood by his table, then before the fire, feeling
+curiously empty headed, almost light headed. He stared at the fire,
+listened to its faint crackling, and felt as if his life were a hollow
+shell.
+
+Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time--he did not know
+whether for five minutes or an hour--when he was made self-conscious by
+an event in the house. He heard two women's voices in conversation,
+apparently on the staircase.
+
+One of them said:
+
+"The duster, I tell you!"
+
+The other replied:
+
+"Well, I didn't leave it. Ask Fanny, can't you!"
+
+"Fanny doesn't know."
+
+"She ought to know, then!"
+
+"Ought yourself! Fanny's no business with the duster no more than--"
+
+At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was
+Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:
+
+"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.
+Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If
+you must speak, go downstairs."
+
+There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then
+again silence.
+
+Claude came away from the fire.
+
+"Your master is at work."
+
+He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost
+of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the
+devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he
+was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be
+doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen
+discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid
+musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her
+lap. And he ground his teeth.
+
+"I can't--I can't--I never shall be able to!"
+
+He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.
+When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed,
+photographed eyes.
+
+Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing
+vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came
+up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by
+distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began,
+continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle
+of a phrase.
+
+Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had
+rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in
+the land without light.
+
+The master was working.
+
+But the master was not working.
+
+Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was
+doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
+atmosphere created by Charmian.
+
+One thing specially troubled him.
+
+So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
+perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
+effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
+"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
+golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
+never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.
+
+But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
+young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
+lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
+this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
+he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
+rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
+account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
+art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
+sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
+masculinity.
+
+This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
+home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
+He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
+until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
+the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
+maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
+sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.
+
+During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
+for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
+Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And
+she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
+it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
+"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
+man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
+was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
+"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
+destined to conquer.
+
+All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
+surprised at the match. They recognized the worldly instinct in Charmian,
+which many of them shared, and could not quite understand why she had
+chosen Claude Heath as her husband. They had not heard much of him. He
+never went anywhere, was personally unknown to them. It seemed rather
+odd. They had scarcely thought Charmian Mansfield would make that kind
+of marriage. Of course he was a thorough gentleman, and a man with
+pleasant, even swiftly attractive manners. But still--! The general
+verdict was that Charmian must have fallen violently in love with the
+man.
+
+She felt the feelings of the "set." And she felt that she must justify
+her choice as soon as possible. To the set Claude Heath was simply a
+nobody. Charmian meant to turn him into a somebody.
+
+This turning of Claude into a somebody was to be the first really
+important step in her campaign on his behalf. It must be done subtly,
+delicately, but it must be done swiftly. She was secretly impatient to
+justify her choice.
+
+She had at first relied on Max Elliot to help her. He was an
+enthusiastic man and had influence. Unluckily she soon found that for
+the moment he was so busy adoring Jacques Sennier that he had no time to
+beat the big drum for another. Sennier had carried him off his feet, and
+Madame Sennier had "got hold of him." The last phrase was Charmian's. It
+was speedily evident to her that, womanlike, the Frenchwoman was not
+satisfied with the fact of her husband's immense success. She was
+determined that no rival should spring up to divide adorers into camps.
+No doubt she argued that there is in the musical world only a limited
+number of discriminating enthusiasts, capable of forming and fostering
+public opinion, of "giving a lead" to the critics, and through them to
+the world. She wanted them all for her husband. And their allegiance
+must be undivided. Although she was in New York, she had Max Elliot "in
+her pocket" in London. It was a feat which won Charmian's respect, but
+which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when
+she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was
+concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment
+want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a
+pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had
+taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of
+friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various
+admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had
+said, an extraordinary woman, had a keen eye to the main chance. She
+acted as a sort of agent to her husband, and was reported on all hands
+to be capable of driving a very hard bargain. She and Max Elliot were
+perpetually cabling to each other across the Atlantic, and Max was
+seriously thinking of imitating Margot Drake and "running over" to New
+York on the _Lusitania_. Only his business in London detained him. He
+spoke of Sennier invariably as "Jacques," of Madame Sennier as
+"Henriette." Living English composers scarcely existed any more in his
+sight. France was the country of music. Only from France could one
+expect anything of real value to the truly cultured.
+
+Charmian began to hate this absurd entente cordiale.
+
+Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide
+Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs.
+Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was
+married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs.
+Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on
+their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was,
+musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner
+there had been nobody to play upon feminine nerves as the little
+Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known
+society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears
+Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs.
+Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no
+use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the
+Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with
+Cowes.
+
+The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly.
+
+But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men
+have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the
+flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently
+began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get
+a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious
+talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on
+the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly
+herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom,"
+unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent
+nobody would pay any attention to what she said.
+
+"What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of
+work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed.
+She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude
+was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard
+his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the
+scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not
+the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind.
+The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the
+direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what
+he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers.
+
+One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park
+Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise,
+without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out
+definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present
+moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame
+Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more
+_engouée_ than ever.
+
+She had been as straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her
+individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present
+only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and
+even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the
+most curious features of Sennier's vogue was the worship accorded by
+women as well as by men to his dominating wife. They talked and thought
+almost as much about her as they did about him. And though his was the
+might of genius, hers seemed to be the might of personality. The
+perpetual chanting of the Frenchwoman's praises had "got upon"
+Charmian's nerves. She felt this afternoon as if she could not bear it
+much longer, unless some outlet was provided for her secret desires. And
+she arrived at Kensington Square in a condition of suppressed nervous
+excitement.
+
+She paid the driver of the taxi-cab and rang the bell. She had forgotten
+to take her key. Alice answered the door.
+
+"Is Mr. Heath in?" asked Charmian.
+
+"He's been playing golf, ma'am. But he's just come in," answered Alice,
+a plump, soft-looking girl, with rather sulky blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, of course! It's Saturday."
+
+On Saturday Claude generally took a half-holiday, and went down to
+Richmond to play golf with a friend of his who lived there, an old
+Cornish chum called Tregorwan.
+
+"Where is Mr. Heath?" continued Charmian, standing in the little hall.
+
+"Having his tea in the drawing-room, ma'am."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care
+about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.
+Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques
+Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she
+remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little
+room, how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she
+realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state,
+and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.
+
+It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the
+wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily
+nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and
+red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a
+musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.
+Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped
+up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.
+
+"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."
+
+"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.
+Don't you want more light?"
+
+"I like the firelight."
+
+He sat down again and lifted the teapot.
+
+"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."
+
+"You remember we're dining with Madre!"
+
+"Oh--to be sure!"
+
+"But not till half-past eight."
+
+She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles
+to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy
+for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one
+thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical
+hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now
+that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal
+golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.
+
+"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot
+back from New York."
+
+"Did she enjoy her visit?"
+
+"Immensely. She's--as she calls it--tickled to death with the Americans
+in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was
+there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques
+Sennier."
+
+"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said,
+seriously, even earnestly.
+
+"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most
+enthusiastic nation in the world."
+
+"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."
+
+How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy
+in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!
+
+She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:
+
+"How is the work getting on?"
+
+There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:
+
+"The work?"
+
+"Yes, yours."
+
+She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that
+sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this
+embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.
+
+"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care
+for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you
+would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Did I? When?"
+
+"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And
+now it's nearly two months."
+
+She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and
+lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern,
+almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood
+in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment
+almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.
+
+"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"
+
+"But, surely--surely--why should you want to know?"
+
+"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."
+
+"Oh, it could never be that--the work of another."
+
+"I want to identify myself with you."
+
+There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last
+Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the
+voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:
+
+"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've
+been in my room?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I haven't been working on anything."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I haven't been working at all."
+
+"Not working!"
+
+"No."
+
+"But--you must--but we were all so quiet! I told Alice--"
+
+"I never asked you to."
+
+"No, but of course--but what have you been doing up there?"
+
+"Reading Carlyle's _French Revolution_ most of the time."
+
+"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"
+
+In her voice there was a sound of outrage. Claude got up and stood by
+the fire.
+
+"It isn't my fault," he said. "The truth is I can't work in that room. I
+can't work in this house."
+
+"But it's our home."
+
+"I know, but I can't work in it. Perhaps it's because of the maids,
+knowing they're creeping about, wondering--I don't know what it is. I've
+tried, but I can't do anything."
+
+"But--how dreadful! Nearly two months wasted!"
+
+He felt that she was condemning him, and a secret anger surged through
+him. His reserve, too, was suffering torment.
+
+"I'm sorry, Charmian. But I couldn't help it."
+
+"But then, why did you go up and shut yourself in day after day?"
+
+"I hoped to be able to do something."
+
+"But----"
+
+"And I saw you expected me to go."
+
+The truth was out. Claude felt, as he spoke it, as if he were tearing
+off clothes. How he loathed that weakness of his, which manifested
+itself in the sometimes almost uncontrollable instinct to give, or to
+try to give, others what they expected of him.
+
+"Expected you! But naturally--"
+
+"Yes, I know. Well, that's how it is! I can't work in this house."
+
+He spoke almost roughly now.
+
+"I don't want to assume any absurd artistic pose," he continued. "I hate
+the affectations sometimes supposed to belong to my profession. But it's
+no use pretending about a thing of this kind. There are some places,
+some atmospheres, if you like to use the word generally used, that help
+anyone who tries to create, and some that hinder. It's not only a matter
+of place, I suppose, but of people. This house is too small, or
+something. There are too many people in it. I feel that they are all
+bothering and wondering about me, treading softly for me." He threw out
+his hands. "I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm paralyzed here. I
+suppose you think I'm half mad."
+
+To his great surprise, she answered, in quite a different voice from the
+voice which had suggested outrage:
+
+"No, no; great artists are always like that. They are always
+extraordinary."
+
+There was a mysterious pleasure, almost gratification, in her voice.
+
+"You would be like that. I should have known."
+
+"Oh, as to that--"
+
+"I understand, Claudie. You needn't say any more."
+
+Claude turned rather brusquely round to face the fire. As he said
+nothing, Charmian continued:
+
+"What is to be done now? We have taken this house--"
+
+He wheeled round.
+
+"Of course we shall stay in this house. It suits us admirably. Besides,
+to move simply because--"
+
+"Your work comes before all."
+
+He compressed his lips. He began to hate his own talent.
+
+"I think the best thing to do," he said, "would be for me to look for a
+studio somewhere. I could easily find one, put a piano and a few chairs
+in, and go there every day to work. Lots of men do that sort of thing.
+It's like going to an office."
+
+"Capital!" she said. "Then you'll be quite isolated, and you'll get on
+ever so fast. Won't you?"
+
+"I think probably I could work."
+
+"And you will. Before we married you worked so hard. I want"--she got
+up, came to him, and put her hand in his--"I want to feel that marriage
+has helped you, not hindered you, in your career. I want to feel that I
+urge you on, don't hold you back."
+
+Claude longed to tell her to leave him alone. But he thought of coming
+isolation in the studio, and refrained. Bending down, he kissed her.
+
+"It will be all right," he said, "when I've got a place where I can be
+quite alone for some hours each day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+With an energy that was almost feverish, Charmian threw herself into the
+search for a studio. The little room had been a failure, through no
+fault of hers. She must make a success of the studio. She and Claude set
+forth together, and soon bent their steps toward Chelsea. There were
+studios to be had in Kensington, of course. But Claude happened to
+mention Chelsea, and at once Charmian took up the idea. The right
+atmosphere--that was the object of this new quest, the end and aim of
+their wanderings. If it were to be found in Chelsea, then in Chelsea
+Claude must make his daily habitation. Charmian seconded the Chelsea
+proposition with an enthusiasm that was almost a little anxious. Chelsea
+was so picturesque, so near the river, that somber and wonderful heart
+of London. Such interesting and famous people lived in Chelsea now, and
+had lived there in the past. She wondered they had not decided to live
+in Chelsea instead of in Kensington. But Claude was right, unerring in
+his judgment. Of course the studio must be in Chelsea.
+
+One was found not far from Glebe Place, in a large red building with an
+arched entrance, handsome steps, and several artistic-looking windows,
+with leaded panes and soda-water bottle grass. It was on the ground
+floor, but it was quiet, large but not enormous, and well-planned. It
+contained however, one unnecessary, though not unattractive, feature. At
+one end, on the left of the door, there was a platform reached by a
+flight of steps, and screened off with wood from the rest of the room.
+The caretaker, who had the key and showed them round, explained that
+this had been planned and put up by an Austrian painter, who used the
+chamber formed by the platform and the upper part of the screen as a
+bedroom, and the space below, roofed by the platform as a kitchen.
+
+The rent was one hundred pounds a year.
+
+This seemed too much to Claude. He felt ashamed to spend such a large
+sum on what must seem an unnecessary caprice to the average person, even
+probably to people who were above the average. If he were known as a
+composer, if he were popular or famous, the matter, he felt, would be
+quite different. Everyone understands the artistic needs of the famous
+man, or pretends to understand them. But Claude and his work were
+entirely unknown to fame. And now, as he hesitated about the payment of
+this hundred pounds, he regretted this, as he had never before regretted
+it.
+
+But Charmian was strong in her insistence upon his having this
+particular studio. She saw he had taken a fancy to it.
+
+"I know you feel there's the right atmosphere here," she said. "I can
+see you do. It would be fatal not to take this studio if you have that
+feeling. Never mind the expense. We shall get it all back in the
+future."
+
+"Back in the future!" he said, as if startled. "How?"
+
+She saw she had been imprudent, had made a sort of slip.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Some day when your father--But don't let's talk of
+that. A hundred a year is not very much. It will only mean not quite so
+many new hats and dresses for me."
+
+Claude flushed, suddenly and violently.
+
+"Charmian! You can't suppose--"
+
+"Surely a wife has the right to do something to help her husband?"
+
+"But I don't need--I mean, I could never consent--"
+
+She made a face at him, drawing down her brows, and turning her eyes to
+the left where the caretaker stood, with a bunch of keys in his large,
+gouty, red hands. Claude said no more. As they went out Charmian smiled
+at the caretaker.
+
+"We are going to take it. My husband likes it."
+
+"Yes, ma'am. It's a mighty fine studio. The Baron was sorry to leave it,
+but he had to go back to Vi-henner."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Now the next thing is to furnish it," said Charmian, as they walked
+away.
+
+"I shall only want my piano, a chair, and a table," said Claude.
+
+It was only by making a very great effort that he was able to speak
+naturally, with any simplicity.
+
+"Besides," he added quickly, "it's really too expensive. A hundred a
+year is absurd."
+
+"If it were two hundred a year it wouldn't be a penny too much if you
+really like it, if you will feel happy and at home in it. I'm going to
+furnish it for you, quite simply, of course. Just rugs and a divan or
+two, and a screen to shut out the door, two or three pretty comfortable
+chairs, some draperies--only thin ones, nothing heavy to spoil the
+acoustics--a few cushions, a table or two. Oh, and you must have a
+spirit-lamp, a little _batterie de cuisine_, and perhaps a tea-basket."
+
+"But, my dear Charmian--"
+
+"Hush, old boy! You have genius, but you don't understand these things.
+These are the woman's things. I shall love getting together everything.
+Surely you don't want to spoil my little fun. I've made a failure of
+your workroom in Kensington. Do let me try to make a success of the
+studio."
+
+What could Claude do but thank her, but let her have her way?
+
+The studio was taken for three years and furnished. For days Charmian
+talked and thought of little else. She was prompted, carried on, by two
+desires--one, that Claude should be able to work hard as soon as
+possible; the other, that people should realize what an energetic,
+capable, and enthusiastic woman she was. The Madame Sennier spirit
+attended her in her goings out and her comings in, armed her with
+energy, with gaiety, with patience.
+
+When at length all was ready, she said:
+
+"Claude, to-morrow I want you to do something for me."
+
+"What is it? Of course I will do it. You've been so good, giving up
+everything for the studio."
+
+Charmian had really given up several parties, and explained why she
+could not go to them to inquiring hostesses of the "set."
+
+"I want you to let us _pendre la crémaillère_ to-morrow evening all
+alone, just you and I together."
+
+"In the studio?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Well, but"--he smiled, then laughed rather awkwardly--"but what could
+we do there all alone? What is there to do? And, besides, there's that
+party at Mrs. Shiffney's to-morrow night. We were both going to that."
+
+"We could go there afterward if we felt inclined. But--I don't know that
+I want to go to Adelaide Shiffney just now."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Perhaps--only perhaps, remember--I'll tell you to-morrow night in the
+studio."
+
+She assumed in the last words that the matter was settled, and Claude
+raised no further objection. He saw she was set upon the carrying out of
+her plan. There was will in her long eyes. He could not help fancying
+that either she had some surprise in store for him, or that she meant to
+do, or say, something extremely definite, which she had already decided
+upon in her mind, to-morrow in the studio.
+
+He felt slightly uneasy.
+
+On the following morning Charmian looked distinctly mysterious, and
+rather as if she wished Claude to notice her mystery. He ignored it,
+however, though he realized that some plan must be maturing in her head.
+His suspicion of the day before was certainly well founded.
+
+"What about this evening, Charmian?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, we are going to _pendre la crémaillère_. You remember we decided
+yesterday."
+
+"Before or after dinner? And what about Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+"Well, I thought we might go to the studio about half-past seven or
+eight. Could you meet me there--say at half-past seven?"
+
+"Meet you?"
+
+"Yes; I've got to go out in that direction and could take it on the way
+home."
+
+"All right. But dinner? That's just at dinner-time--not that I care."
+
+"We could have something when we get home. I can tell Alice to put
+something in the dining-room for us. There's that pie, and we can have a
+bottle of champagne to drink success to the studio, if we want it."
+
+"And Mrs. Shiffney's given up?"
+
+"We can see how we feel. She only asked us for eleven. We can easily
+dress and go, it we want to."
+
+So it was settled.
+
+As Claude had not yet begun to work he took a long and solitary walk in
+the afternoon. He made his way to Battersea Park, and spent nearly two
+hours there. That day he felt as if a crisis, perhaps small but very
+definite, had arisen in his life. For some five months now he had been
+inactive. He had lost the long habit of work. He had allowed his life to
+be disorganized. No longer had he a grip on himself and on life. From
+to-morrow he must get that grip again. In the isolation of the studio he
+would surely be able to get it. Yet he felt very doubtful. He did not
+know what he wanted to do. He seemed to have drifted very far away from
+the days when his talent, or his genius, spoke with no uncertain voice,
+dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt.
+He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The
+Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to
+music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days
+stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what
+was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently
+passed not a few with the _French Revolution_. But the evenings of
+course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian.
+He was beginning to know something of the society in which she had
+always lived. There were many pleasant, some charming, people in it. He
+found a certain enjoyment in the little dinners, the theater parties,
+even in the few receptions he had been to. But he was obliged to
+acknowledge to himself that, when in this society, he disliked the fact
+that he was an unknown man. This society did not give him the incentive
+to do anything great. On the other hand it made him dislike being--or
+was it only seeming?--small. Charmian's attitude, too, had often
+rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He
+had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely
+repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But
+he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her
+position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he
+were closely connected with it, though he had not quite understood how.
+
+All this now rose up, seemed to spread out before his mind as he walked
+in Battersea Park. And he said to himself, "It can't go on. I simply
+must get to work on something. I must get a grip on myself and my life
+again." He remembered the heat of his soul after he had heard Jacques
+Sennier's opera, the passion almost to do something great that had
+glowed in him, the longing for fame. Then he had said to himself: "My
+life shall feed my art. I'll live, and by living I'll achieve." Out of
+that heat no rare flower had arisen. He had come out into the world. He
+had married Charmian, had travelled in Italy. And that was all.
+
+That day he was angry with himself, was sick of his idle life. But he
+did not feel within him the strong certainty that he would be able to
+take his life in hand and transform it, which drives doubt and sorrow
+out of a man. He kept on saying, "I must!" But he did not say, "I
+shall!"
+
+The fact was that the mainspring was missing from the watch. Claude was
+living as if he loved, but he was not loving.
+
+At half-past seven he passed up the handsome steps and under the arch
+which led to his studio.
+
+The caretaker with gouty hands met him. This man had been a soldier, and
+still had a soldier's eyes, and a way of presenting himself, rather
+sternly and watchfully, to those arriving in "my building," as he called
+the house full of studios, which was military. But gout, and it is to be
+feared drink, had long ago made him physically flaccid, and mentally
+rather sulky and vague. He looked a wreck, and as if he guessed that he
+was a wreck. An artist on the first floor had labelled him, "The
+derelict looking for tips to the offing."
+
+"The lady's here, sir," he observed, on seeing Claude.
+
+"Is she?"
+
+"Been 'ere"--he sometimes dropped an aitch and sometimes did not--"this
+half hour."
+
+The fact apparently surprised him, almost indeed upset him.
+
+"This 'alf hour," he repeated, this time dropping the aitch to make a
+change.
+
+"Oh," said Claude, disdaining the explanation which seemed to be
+expected.
+
+He walked on, leaving the guardian to his gout.
+
+The studio was lit up, and directly Claude opened the door he smelt
+coffee and something else--sausages, he fancied. At once he guessed why
+Charmian had arranged to meet him at the studio, instead of going there
+with him. He shut the door slowly. Yes, certainly, sausages.
+
+"Charmian!" he called.
+
+She came out from behind the screen, dressed in a very plain,
+workmanlike black gown, over which she was wearing a large butcher blue
+apron. Her sleeves were turned up and her face was flushed. Claude
+thought she looked younger than she usually did.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"Cooking the dinner," she replied, in a practical voice. "It will be
+ready in a minute. Take off your coat and sit down."
+
+She turned round and disappeared. Something behind the screen was
+hissing like a snake.
+
+Claude now saw a table laid in the middle of the studio. On a rough
+white cloth were plates, knives, and forks, large coffee cups with
+flowers coarsely painted on a gray ground with a faint tinge of blue in
+it, rolls of bread, butter, a cake richly brown in color. A vase of
+coarse, but effective pottery, full of scented wild geranium, stood in
+the midst. Claude took off hat and coat, hung them up on a hook, and
+glanced around.
+
+Certainly Charmian had arranged the furniture well, chosen it well, too.
+The place looked cosy, and everything was in excellent taste. There was
+comfort without luxury. Claude felt that he ought to be very grateful.
+
+"Coming!"
+
+Her voice cried out from behind the screen, and she appeared bearing a
+large dish full of smoking sausages, which she set down on the table.
+
+"Now for the eggs and the coffee!" she said.
+
+Another moment and they were on the table, too, with a plateful of
+buttered toast.
+
+"Studio fare!" she said, taking off the blue apron, pulling down her
+sleeves, and looking at Claude. "Are you surprised?"
+
+"I was for the first moment."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, I had felt sure you were up to something, that you had some
+scheme in your head, some plan for to-day. But I didn't connect it with
+sausages."
+
+Her expression changed slightly.
+
+"Perhaps it isn't only sausages. But it begins with them. Are you
+hungry?"
+
+"Yes, very. I've been walking in Battersea Park."
+
+"Claudie, how awful!"
+
+They sat down and fell to--Charmian's expression. She was playing at the
+Vie de Bohème, but she thought she was being rather serious, that she
+was helping to launch Claude in a new and suitable life. And behind the
+light absurdity of this quite unnecessary meal there was intention,
+grave and intense. The wasted two months must be made up for, the hours
+given to the _French Revolution_ be redeemed. This meal was only the
+prelude to something else.
+
+"Is it good?" she asked, as Claude ate and drank.
+
+"Excellent! Where have you been to-day?"
+
+"I've seen Madre and Susan Fleet."
+
+"Miss Fleet at last."
+
+"Yes. It is so tiresome her moving about so much. I care for her more
+than for any woman in London. All this time she's been in Paris doing
+things for Adelaide Shiffney."
+
+"Did Madre know about to-night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why didn't you tell her? Why not have asked her to come? We belong to
+her and she to us. It would have been natural."
+
+"I love Madre. But I didn't want even her to-night."
+
+Claude realized that he was assisting at a prelude. But he only said:
+
+"I suppose she is going to Mrs. Shiffney's to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+When they had finished Charmian said:
+
+"Now I'll clear away."
+
+"I'll help you."
+
+"No, you mustn't. I want you to sit down in that cosy chair there, and
+light your cigar--oh, or your pipe! Yes, to-night you must smoke a
+pipe."
+
+"I haven't brought it."
+
+"Well, then, a cigar. I won't be long."
+
+She began clearing the table. Claude obediently drew out his cigar-case.
+He still felt uneasy. What was coming? He could not tell. But he felt
+almost sure that something was coming which would distress his secret
+sensitiveness, his strong reserve.
+
+He lit a cigar, and sat down in the armchair Charmian had indicated. She
+flitted in and out, removing things from the table, shook out and folded
+the rough white cloth, laid it away somewhere behind the screen, and at
+last came to sit down.
+
+The studio was lit up with electric light.
+
+"There's too much light," she said. "Don't move. I'll do it."
+
+She went over to the door, and turned out two burners, leaving only one
+alight.
+
+"Isn't that ever so much better?" she said, coming to sit down near
+Claude.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is."
+
+"Cosier, more intime."
+
+She sat down with a little sigh.
+
+"I'm going to have a cigarette."
+
+She drew out a thin silver case, opened it.
+
+"A teeny Russian one."
+
+Claude struck a match. She put the cigarette between her lips, and
+leaned forward to the tiny flame.
+
+"That's it."
+
+She sighed.
+
+After a moment of silence she said:
+
+"I'm glad you couldn't work in the little room. If you had been able to
+we should never have had this."
+
+"We!" thought Claude.
+
+"And," she continued, "I feel this is the beginning of great things for
+you. I feel as if, without meaning to, I'd taken you away from your
+path, as if now I understood better. But I don't think it was quite my
+fault if I didn't understand. Claudie, do you know you're terribly
+reserved?"
+
+"Am I?" he said.
+
+He shifted in his chair, took the cigar out of his mouth, and put it
+back again.
+
+"Well, aren't you? Two whole months, and you never told me you couldn't
+work."
+
+"I hated to, after you'd taken so much trouble with that room."
+
+"I know. But, still, directly you did tell me, I perfectly understood.
+I"--she spoke with distinct pressure--"I am a wife who can understand.
+Don't you remember that night at Jacques Sennier's opera?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't I understand then? At the end when they were all applauding?
+I've got your letter, the letter you wrote that night. I shall always
+keep it. Such a burning letter, saying I had inspired you, that my love
+and belief had made you feel as if you could do something great if you
+changed your life, if you lived with me. You remember?"
+
+"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."
+
+Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get
+back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that
+letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter
+back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that
+Charmian had turned out those two burners.
+
+"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from
+that night."
+
+Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of
+love? Was she going to tax him with it?
+
+"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was
+a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that
+high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."
+
+"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a
+genius."
+
+At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man,
+which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of
+melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words
+intensified it.
+
+"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he
+said, with a bluntness not usual in him.
+
+"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget
+things Max Elliot has said about you--long ago. And Madre thinks--I know
+that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some
+of your things."
+
+"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.
+
+He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She
+had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But
+this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian
+had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.
+
+"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."
+
+Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian
+about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he
+felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.
+
+Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had
+been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and
+permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness
+which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night,
+however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to
+bring up battalions of will.
+
+"Well?" Claude said.
+
+"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But
+I don't think they are for everybody."
+
+"For everybody! How do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me
+for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public
+which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of
+Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier--our own Elgar, too! What I mean is
+that perhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few.
+There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost
+frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you."
+
+She was thinking of the Burningtons, the Drakes, of other
+Sennier-worshippers.
+
+"I believe it is partly because of the words you set," she added. "Great
+words, of course. But where can they be sung? Not everywhere. And people
+are so strange about the Bible."
+
+"Strange about the Bible!"
+
+"English people, and even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of
+queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio."
+
+She paused. Claude said nothing. He was feeling hot all over.
+
+"I can't help wishing, for your own sake, that you wouldn't always go to
+the Bible for your inspiration."
+
+"I daresay it is very absurd of me."
+
+"Claudie, you could never be absurd."
+
+"Anybody can be absurd."
+
+"I could never think you absurd. But I suppose everyone can make a
+mistake. It seems to me as if there are a lot of channels, some short,
+ending abruptly, some long, going almost to the center of things. And
+genius is like a liquid poured into them. I only want you to pour yours
+into a long channel. Is it very stupid, or perverse, of me?"
+
+As she said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine
+intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable
+by man.
+
+"No, Charmian, of course not. So you think I've been pouring into a very
+short channel?"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid I've never thought about it."
+
+"I know. It wants another to do that, I think."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"You care for strange things. One can see that by your choice of words.
+But there are strange and wonderful words not in the Bible. The other
+day I was looking into Rossetti's poems. I read _Staff and Scrip_ again
+and _Sister Helen_. There are marvellous passages in both of those. I
+wish sometimes you'd let me come in here, when you're done working, and
+make tea for you, and just read aloud to you anything interesting I come
+across."
+
+That was the beginning of a new connection between husband and wife, the
+beginning also of a new epoch in Claude's life as a composer.
+
+When they left the studio that night he had agreed to Charmian's
+proposal that she should spend some of her spare time in looking out
+words that might be suitable for a musical setting, "in your peculiar
+vein," as she said. By doing this he had abandoned his complete liberty
+as a creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his
+wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on
+his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the
+something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or
+spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled
+liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man
+may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through
+long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which
+instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or
+strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's
+definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to
+become more definite.
+
+They were in Kensington by ten o'clock that night. Charmian was in high
+spirits. A strong hope was dawning in her. Already she felt almost like
+a collaborator with Claude.
+
+"Don't let us go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Let us dress and go to
+Adelaide Shiffney's."
+
+"Very well," replied Claude. "By the way, what were you going to tell me
+about her?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" she said.
+
+And they went up to dress.
+
+There was a crowd in Grosvenor Square. A good many people were still
+abroad, but there were enough in London to fill Mrs. Shiffney's
+drawing-rooms. And notorieties, beauties, and those mysterious nobodies
+who "go everywhere" until they almost succeed in becoming somebodies,
+were to be seen on every side. Charmian perceived at once that this was
+one of Adelaide's non-exclusive parties. Mrs. Shiffney seldom
+entertained on a very large scale.
+
+"One bore, or one frump, can ruin a party," was a favorite saying of
+hers. But even she, now and then, condescended to "clear people off."
+Charmian realized that Adelaide was making a clearance to-night.
+
+Since her marriage with Claude she had not been invited to No. 14
+B--Mrs. Shiffney's number in the Square--before.
+
+As she came in to the first drawing-room and looked quickly round she
+thought:
+
+"She is clearing off me and Claude."
+
+And for a moment she wished they had not come. Her old horror of being
+numbered with the great crowd of the undistinguished came upon her once
+more. Then she thought of the conversation in the studio, and she
+hardened herself in resolve.
+
+"He shall be famous. I will make him famous, whether he wishes it, cares
+for it, or not."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was not standing close to the first door to "receive"
+solemnly. She could not "be bothered" to do that. The Heaths presently
+came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second
+drawing-room.
+
+In the room just beyond a small orchestra was playing. This was a sure
+sign of a "clearance" party. Mrs. Shiffney never had an orchestra
+playing alone, and steadily, through an evening unless bores and frumps
+were present. "Hungarians in distress" she called these uniformed
+musicians, "trying to help bores in distress and failing inevitably."
+
+She held out her hand to Charmian with a faintly ironic smile.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you. Ah, Mr. Heath--Benedick as the married man. I
+expect you are doing something wonderful as one hears nothing about you.
+The deep silence fills me with expectation."
+
+She smiled again, and turned to speak to an old lady with fuzzy white
+hair.
+
+"One of the fuzzywuzzies who go to private views, and who insist on
+knowing me once a year for my sins."
+
+Charmian's lips tightened as she walked slowly on.
+
+She met many people whom she knew, too many; and that evening she felt
+peculiarly aware of the insignificance of Claude and herself, combined
+as a "married couple," in the eyes of this society. What were they? Just
+two people with fifteen hundred a year and a little house near
+Kensington High Street. As an unmarried girl in Berkeley Square, with a
+popular mother, possibilities had floated about her. Clever, rising men
+came to that house. She had charm. She was "in" everything. Now she felt
+that a sort of fiat had been pronounced, perhaps by Adelaide Shiffney,
+and her following, "Charmian's dropping out."
+
+No doubt she exaggerated. She was half conscious that she was
+exaggerating. But there was surely a change in the attitude people
+adopted toward her. She attributed it to Mrs. Shiffney. "Adelaide hates
+Claude," she said to herself, adding a moment later the woman's reason,
+"because she was in love with him before he married me, and he wouldn't
+look at her." Such a hatred of Adelaide's would almost have pleased her,
+had not Adelaide unfortunately been so very influential.
+
+Claude caught sight of Mrs. Mansfield and went to join her, while
+Charmian spoke to Lady Mildred Burnington, and then to Max Elliot.
+
+Lady Mildred, whose eyes looked more feverish even than usual, and whose
+face was ravaged, as if by some passion or sorrow for ever burning
+within her, had a perfunctory manner which fought with her expression.
+Her face was too much alive. Her manner was half dead. Only when she
+played the violin was the whole woman in accord, harmonious. Then truth,
+vigor, intention emerged from her, and she conquered. To-night she spoke
+of the prospects for the opera season, looking about her as if seeking
+fresh causes for dissatisfaction.
+
+"It's going to be dull," she said. "Covent Garden has things all its own
+way, and therefore it goes to sleep. But in June we shall have Sennier.
+That is something. Without him it would really not be worth while to
+take a box. I told Mr. Brett so."
+
+"What did he say?" asked Charmian.
+
+"One Sennier makes a summer."
+
+It was at this moment that Max Elliot came up, looking as he nearly
+always did, cheerful and ready to be kind.
+
+"I know," he said to Lady Mildred, "you're complaining about the opera.
+I've just been with the Admiral."
+
+"Hilary knows less about music than even the average Englishman."
+
+"Well, he's been swearing, and even--saving your presence--cursing by
+Strauss."
+
+"He thinks that places him with the connoisseurs. It's his ambition to
+prove to the world that one may be an Admiral and yet be quite
+intelligent, even have what is called taste. He declines to be a
+sea-dog."
+
+"I think it's only living up to you. But have you really no hope of the
+opera?"
+
+"Very little--unless Sennier saves the situation."
+
+"Has he anything new?" asked Charmian.
+
+Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
+
+"Madame Sennier says he hasn't."
+
+"We ought to have a rival enterprise here as they have in New York at
+present," said Lady Mildred.
+
+"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era,"
+said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that
+seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."
+
+"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in
+England?"
+
+"Arrived to-day by the _Lusitania_ in search of talent, of someone who
+can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him
+at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the
+enemy's camp."
+
+Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by
+"commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could
+be such a keen and concentrated partisan.
+
+"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars without a murmur to get
+Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.
+
+"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is
+Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"
+
+Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
+
+"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"
+
+"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."
+
+"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"
+
+"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.
+
+"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.
+Margot Drake is speaking to him."
+
+"Margot--of course! But I can't see them."
+
+Max Elliot moved.
+
+"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"
+
+Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.
+
+"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."
+
+"To be sure!"
+
+"What--that little man!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."
+
+"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford
+is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous
+men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his
+way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last
+fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him
+point and even charm as a man."
+
+"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you
+know him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do introduce me to him."
+
+She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face,
+and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney
+kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed
+her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul
+Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were
+converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite
+understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which
+marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she
+repeated quietly, but with determination:
+
+"Please introduce me to him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm,
+to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who
+will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not
+been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew
+that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes
+in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But
+she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of
+his personality.
+
+Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown
+eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head
+which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined
+features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was
+intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be
+unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a
+carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a
+faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to
+grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather
+surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.
+His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve
+links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first
+introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his
+eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong
+imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His
+eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little
+brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance
+which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It
+showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to
+be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.
+
+"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I
+wanted to know the great fighter."
+
+She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some
+people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave
+her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it
+suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do
+with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.
+
+Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows
+sometimes suddenly upward.
+
+"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he
+said, speaking rapidly.
+
+"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."
+
+"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."
+
+"I hope it isn't true."
+
+"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.
+Crayford.
+
+"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his
+_Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life."
+
+"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another
+Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."
+
+"I do hope you'll be successful."
+
+"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man
+can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you
+interested in music?"
+
+"Intensely."
+
+She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating
+whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain.
+Something told her to refrain, and she added:
+
+"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of
+everything."
+
+"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition.
+And it's going to be a bigger proposition than most people dream of."
+
+His eyes flashed.
+
+"Wait till I build an opera house in London, something better than that
+old barn of yours over against the Police Station."
+
+"Are you going to build an opera house here?"
+
+"Why not? But I've got to find some composers. They're somewhere about.
+Bound to be. The thing is to find them. It was a mere chance Sennier
+coming up. If he hadn't married his wife he'd be starving at this
+minute, and I'd be licking the Metropolitan into a cocked hat."
+
+Charmian longed to put her hand on the little man's arm and to say:
+
+"I've married a musician, I've married a genius. Take him up. Give him
+his chance."
+
+But she looked at those big brown eyes which confronted her under the
+twitching eyebrows. And now that the flash was gone she saw in them the
+soul of the business man. Claude was not a "business proposition." It
+was useless to speak of him yet.
+
+"I hope you'll find your composer," she said quietly, almost with a
+dainty indifference.
+
+Then someone came up and claimed Crayford with determination.
+
+"That's a pretty girl," he remarked. "Is she married? I didn't catch her
+name."
+
+"Oh, yes, she's married to an unknown man who composes."
+
+"The devil she is!"
+
+The lips above the tiny beard stretched in a smile that was rather
+sardonic.
+
+Before going away Charmian wanted to have a little talk with Susan
+Fleet, who was helping Mrs. Shiffney with the "fuzzywuzzies." She found
+her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and
+angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her
+toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with
+her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss
+Gretch, as her companion was called, surprisingly.
+
+Miss Gretch, who was drinking claret cup, and eating little rolls which
+contained hidden treasure of pâté de foie gras, bowed and smiled with
+anxious intensity, then abruptly became unnaturally grave, and gazed
+with a sort of piercing attention at Charmian's hair, jewels, gown, fan,
+and shoes.
+
+"She seems to be memorizing me," thought Charmian, wondering who Miss
+Gretch was, and how she came to be there.
+
+"Stay here just a minute, will you?" said Susan Fleet. "Adelaide wants
+me, I see. I'll be back directly."
+
+"Please be sure to come. I want to talk to you," said Charmian.
+
+As Susan Fleet was going she murmured:
+
+"Miss Gretch writes for papers."
+
+Charmian turned to the angular guest with a certain alacrity. They
+talked together with animation till Susan Fleet came back.
+
+A week later, on coming down to breakfast before starting for the
+studio, Claude found among his letters a thin missive, open at the ends,
+and surrounded with yellow paper. He tore the paper, and three newspaper
+cuttings dropped on to his plate.
+
+"What's this?" he said to Charmian, who was sitting opposite to him.
+"Romeike and Curtice! Why should they send me anything?"
+
+He picked up one of the cuttings.
+
+"It's from a paper called _My Lady_."
+
+"What is it about?"
+
+"It seems to be an account of Mrs. Shiffney's party, with something
+marked in blue pencil, 'Mrs. Claude Heath came in late with her
+brilliant husband, whose remarkable musical compositions have not yet
+attained to the celebrity which will undoubtedly be theirs within no
+long time. The few who have heard Mr. Heath's music place him with
+Elgar, Max Reger, and Delius.' Then a description of what you were
+wearing. How very ridiculous and objectionable!"
+
+Claude looked furious and almost ashamed.
+
+"Here's something else! 'A Composer's Studio,' from _The World and His
+Wife_. It really is insufferable."
+
+"Why? What can it say?"
+
+"'Mr. Claude Heath, the rising young composer, who recently married the
+beautiful Miss Charmian Mansfield, of Berkeley Square, has just rented
+and furnished elaborately a magnificent studio in Renwick Place,
+Chelsea. Exquisite Persian rugs strew the floor----'"
+
+Claude stopped, and with an abrupt movement tore the cuttings to pieces
+and threw them on the carpet.
+
+"What can it mean? Who on earth----? Charmian, do you know anything of
+this?"
+
+"Oh," she said, with a sort of earnest disgust, mingled with surprise,
+"it must be that dreadful Miss Gretch!"
+
+"Dreadful Miss Gretch! I never heard of her. Who is she?"
+
+"At Adelaide Shiffney's the other night Susan Fleet introduced me to a
+Miss Gretch. I believe she sometimes writes, for papers or something. I
+had a little talk with her while I was waiting for Susan to come back."
+
+"Did you tell her about the studio?"
+
+"Let me see! Did I? Yes, I believe I did say something. You see, Claude,
+it was the night of----"
+
+"I know it was. But how could you----?"
+
+"How could I suppose things said in a private conversation would ever
+appear in print? I only said that you had a studio because you composed
+and wanted quiet, and that I had been picking up a few old things to
+make it look homey. How extraordinary of Miss Gretch!"
+
+"It has made me look very ridiculous. I am quite unknown, and therefore
+it is impossible for the public to be interested in me. Miss Gretch is
+certainly a very inefficient journalist. Elgar! Delius too! I wonder she
+didn't compare me with Scriabine while she was about it. How hateful it
+is being made a laughing-stock like this."
+
+"Oh, nobody reads those papers, I expect. Still, Miss Gretch----"
+
+"Gretch! What a name!" said Claude.
+
+His anger vanished in an abrupt fit of laughter, but he started for the
+studio in half an hour looking decidedly grim. When he had gone Charmian
+picked up the torn cuttings which were lying on the carpet. She had been
+very slow in finishing breakfast that day.
+
+Since her meeting with Jacob Crayford her mind had run perpetually on
+opera. She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the
+man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big
+proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put
+Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against
+Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being
+actively searched for. If only Claude had written an opera! If only he
+would write an opera now!
+
+Charmian never doubted her husband's ability to do something big. Her
+instinct told her that he had greatness of some kind in him. His music
+had deeply impressed her. But she was sure it was not the sort of thing
+to reach a wide public. It seemed to her against the trend of taste of
+the day. There was an almost terrible austerity in it, combined, she
+believed, with great power and originality. She longed to hear some of
+it given in public with the orchestra and voices. She had thought of
+trying to "get hold of" one of the big conductors, Harold Dane, or
+Vernon Randall, of trying to persuade him to give Claude a hearing at
+Queen's Hall. Then a certain keen prudence had held her back. A voice
+had whispered, "Be patient!" She realized the importance of the first
+step taken in public. Jacques Sennier had been utterly unknown in
+England. He appeared as the composer of the _Paradis Terrestre_. If he
+had been known already as the composer of a number of things which had
+left the public indifferent, would he have made the enormous success he
+had made? She remembered Mascagni and his _Cavalleria_, Leoncavallo and
+his _Pagliacci_. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any
+rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful
+for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in
+arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like
+Jacob Crayford kept a sharp look-out for fresh talent. He read all that
+appeared about new composers of course. Or someone read for him. Even
+"that dreadful Miss Gretch's" lucubrations might come under his notice.
+
+For a week now Claude had gone every day after breakfast to the studio.
+Charmian had not yet disturbed him there. She felt that she must handle
+her husband gently. Although he was so kind, so disposed to be
+sympathetic, to meet people half way, she knew well that there was
+something in him to which as yet she had never probed, which she did not
+understand. She was sufficiently intelligent not to deceive herself
+about this, not to think that because Claude was a man of course she, a
+woman, could see all of him clearly. The hidden something in her husband
+might be a thing resistent. She believed she must go to work gently,
+subtly, even though she meant to be very firm. So she had let Claude
+have a week to himself. This gave him time to feel that the studio was a
+sanctum, perhaps also that it was a rather lonely one. Meanwhile, she
+had been searching for "words."
+
+That task was a difficult one, because her mind was obsessed by the
+thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her.
+She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly
+"plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was
+more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words.
+But the music of Claude's which she knew was joined with words. And he
+must do something with words. For that, as it were, would lead the way
+toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set
+some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he
+might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a
+violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued.
+And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically,
+descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for
+opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent for such work, that
+he was not drawn toward the theater. But if she could lead him gradually
+toward things essentially dramatic, she might wake up in him forces the
+tendency of which he had never suspected.
+
+She re-read Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William
+Morris,--Wordsworth no--into Fiona Macleod, William Watson, John
+Davidson, Alfred Noyes. Now and then she was strongly attracted by
+something, she thought, "Will it do?" And always at such moments a
+vision of Jacob Crayford seemed to rise up before her, with large brown
+eyes, ears like a faun, nervous hands, and the tiny beard. "Is it a
+business proposition?" The moving lips said that. And she gazed again at
+the poem which had arrested her attention, she thought, "Is it a
+business proposition?" Keats's terribly famous _Belle Dame Sans Merci_
+really attracted her more than anything else. She knew it had been set
+by Cyril Scott, and other ultra-modern composers, but she felt that
+Claude could do something wonderful with it. Yet perhaps it was too well
+known.
+
+One lyric of William Watson's laid a spell upon her:
+
+  "Pass, thou wild heart,
+  Wild heart of youth that still
+  Hast half a will
+      To stay.
+  I grow too old a comrade, let us part.
+      Pass thou away."
+
+She read that and the preceding verse again and again, in the grip of a
+strange and melancholy fascination, dreaming. She woke, and remembered
+that she was young, that Claude was young. But she had reached out and
+touched old age. She had realized, newly, the shortness of the time. And
+a sort of fever assailed her. Claude must begin, must waste no more
+precious hours; she would take him the poem of William Watson, would
+read it to him. He might make of it a song, and in the making he would
+learn something perhaps--to hasten on the path.
+
+She started for the studio one day, taking the _Belle Dame_, William
+Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine,
+Montesquiou, Moréas.
+
+She arrived in Renwick Place just after four o'clock. She meant to make
+tea for Claude and herself, and had brought with her some little cakes
+and a bottle of milk. Quite a load she was carrying. The gouty hands of
+the caretaker went up when he saw her.
+
+"My, ma'am, what a heavy lot for you to be carrying!"
+
+"I'm strong. Mr. Heath's in the studio?"
+
+Before the man could reply she heard the sound of a piano.
+
+"Oh, yes, he is. Is there water there? Yes. That's right. I'm going to
+boil the kettle and make tea."
+
+She went on quickly, opened the door softly, and slipped in.
+
+Claude, who sat with his back to her playing, did not hear her. She
+crept behind the screen into what she called "the kitchen." What fun!
+She could make the tea without his knowing that she was there, and bring
+it in to him when he stopped playing.
+
+As she softly prepared things she listened attentively, with a sort of
+burning attention, to the music. She had not heard it before. She knew
+that when her husband was composing he did not go to the piano. This
+must be something which he had just composed and was trying over. It
+sounded to her mystic, remote, very strange, almost like a soul
+communing with itself; then more violent, more sonorous, but always very
+strange.
+
+The kettle began to boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked
+two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor.
+
+"What's that? Who's there?"
+
+Claude had stopped playing abruptly. His voice was the voice of a man
+startled and angry.
+
+"Who's there?" he repeated loudly.
+
+She heard him get up and come toward the screen.
+
+"Claudie, do forgive me! I slipped in. I thought I would make tea for
+you. It's all ready. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was waiting
+till you had finished. I'm so sorry."
+
+"You, Charmian!"
+
+There was an odd remote expression in his eyes, and his whole face
+looked excited.
+
+"Do--do forgive me, Claudie! Those dreadful spoons!"
+
+She picked them up.
+
+"Of course. What are all these books doing here?"
+
+"I brought them. I thought after tea we might talk over words. You
+remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Well--but I've begun on something."
+
+"Were you playing it just now?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Francis Thompson's _The Hound of Heaven_."
+
+Jacob Crayford--what would he think of that sort of thing?
+
+"You know it, don't you?" Claude said, as she was silent.
+
+"I've read it, but quite a while ago. I don't remember it well. Of
+course I know it's very wonderful. Madre loves it."
+
+"She was speaking of it at the Shiffney's the other night. That's why it
+occurred to me to study it."
+
+"Oh. Well, now you have stopped shall we have tea?"
+
+"Yes. I've done enough for to-day."
+
+After tea Charmian said:
+
+"I'll study _The Hound of Heaven_ again. But now do you mind if I read
+you two or three of the things I have here?"
+
+"No," he said kindly, but not at all eagerly. "Do read anything you
+like."
+
+It was six o'clock when Charmian read Watson's poem "to finish up with."
+Claude who, absorbed secretly by the thought of his new composition, had
+listened so far without any keen interest, at moments had not listened
+at all, though preserving a decent attitude and manner of attention,
+suddenly woke up into genuine enthusiasm.
+
+"Give me that, Charmian!" he exclaimed. "I scarcely ever write a song.
+But I'll set that."
+
+She gave him the book eagerly.
+
+That evening they were at home. After dinner Claude went to his little
+room to write some letters, and Charmian read _The Hound of Heaven_. She
+decided against it. Beautiful though it was, she considered it too
+mystic, too religious. She was sure many people could not understand it.
+
+"I wish Madre hadn't talked to Claude about it," she thought. "He thinks
+so much of her opinion. And she doesn't care in the least whether Claude
+makes a hit with the public or not."
+
+The mere thought of the word "hit" in connection with Mrs. Mansfield
+almost made Charmian smile.
+
+"I suppose there's something dreadfully vulgar about me," she said to
+herself. "But I belong to the young generation. I can't help loving
+success."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had been the friend, was the friend, of many successful
+men. They came to her for sympathy, advice. She followed their upward
+careers with interest, rejoiced in their triumphs. But she cared for the
+talent in a man rather than for what it brought him. Charmian knew that.
+And long ago Mrs. Mansfield had spoken of the plant that must grow in
+darkness. At this time Charmian began almost to dread her mother's
+influence upon her husband.
+
+She was cheered by a little success.
+
+Claude set Watson's poem rapidly. He played the song to Charmian, and
+she was delighted with it.
+
+"I know people would love that!" she cried.
+
+"If it was properly sung by someone with temperament," he replied. "And
+now I can go on with _The Hound of Heaven_."
+
+Her heart sank.
+
+"I'm only a little afraid they may think you are imitating Elgar," she
+murmured after a moment.
+
+"Imitating Elgar!"
+
+"Not that you are, or ever would do such a thing. It isn't your music,
+it's the subject, that makes me a little afraid. It seems to me to be an
+Elgar subject."
+
+"Really!"
+
+The conversation dropped, and was not resumed. But a fortnight later,
+when Charmian came to make tea in the studio, and asked as to the
+progress of the new work, Claude said rather coldly:
+
+"I'm not going on with it at present."
+
+She saw that he was feeling depressed, and realized why. But she was
+secretly triumphant at the success of her influence, secretly delighted
+with her own cleverness. How deftly, with scarcely more than a word, she
+had turned him from his task. Surely thus had Madame Sennier influenced,
+guided her husband.
+
+"I believe I could do anything with Claude," she said to herself that
+day.
+
+"Play me your Watson song again, Claudie," she said. "I do love it so."
+
+"It's only a trifle."
+
+"I love it!" she repeated.
+
+He sat down at the piano and played it to her once more. When he had
+finished she said:
+
+"I've found someone who could sing that gloriously."
+
+"Who?" he asked.
+
+Playing the song had excited him. He turned eagerly toward her.
+
+"A young American who has been studying in Paris. I met him at the
+Drakes' two or three days ago. Mr. Jacob Crayford, the opera man, thinks
+a great deal of him, I'm told. Let me ask him to come here one day and
+try the _Wild Heart_. May I?"
+
+"Yes, do," said Claude.
+
+"And meanwhile what are you working on instead of _The Hound of
+Heaven_?"
+
+Claude's expression changed. He seemed to stiffen with reserve. But he
+replied, with a kind of elaborate carelessness:
+
+"I think of trying a violin concerto. That would be quite a new
+departure for me. But you know the violin was my second study at the
+Royal College."
+
+"That won't do," thought Charmian.
+
+"If only Kreisler would take it up when it is finished as he took up--"
+she began.
+
+Claude interrupted her.
+
+"It may take me months, so it's no use thinking about who is to play it.
+Probably it will never be played at all."
+
+"Then why compose it?" she nearly said.
+
+But she did not say it. What was the use, when she had resolved that the
+concerto should be abandoned as _The Hound of Heaven_ had been?
+
+She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the
+studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang the _Wild Heart_,
+tried it a second time, became enthusiastic about it. His voice was a
+baritone, and exactly suited the song. He begged Claude to let him sing
+the song during the season at the parties for which he was engaged. They
+studied it together seriously. During these rehearsals Charmian sat in
+an armchair a little way from the piano listening, and feeling the
+intensity of an almost feverish anticipation within her.
+
+This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused
+Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she
+listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages
+again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a
+sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She
+ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing
+quite near, almost close to her.
+
+"People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself.
+
+And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely
+it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving
+love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away
+from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long,
+from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself
+perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to
+the light that illumined the goal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square
+was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and
+Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a
+couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended
+to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the
+Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur, and from there to prosecute
+their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle
+down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music,
+containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's
+hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying
+on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than
+England's.
+
+This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.
+
+The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word.
+During the past London season he had sung Claude's _Wild Heart of Youth_
+everywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed
+in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It
+was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the
+public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a
+singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
+composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
+attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
+of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
+fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
+inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
+drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
+floating on a pool that had depths, responded to the applause, to the
+congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
+concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
+of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
+his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
+too much--that is his surface enjoyed too much--the pleasure it gave,
+the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
+congratulations of easily touched women.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
+in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
+that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
+made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
+working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
+blossomed with expectation.
+
+Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
+lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
+surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.
+
+His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
+sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
+he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
+opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
+Metropolitan.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
+Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
+wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
+bullier."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The devil's own ambition."
+
+Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
+of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
+had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
+His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
+vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then
+had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving
+his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for
+business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he
+hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly
+threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or
+nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford
+took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's
+charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and
+resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that
+intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.
+
+"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just
+got to, and that's all there is to it."
+
+This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.
+
+He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the
+American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of
+shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young
+determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of
+Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness.
+He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved
+intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.
+
+And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."
+
+Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a
+lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at
+once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon
+Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the
+studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there.
+He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He
+had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music
+very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the
+screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."
+
+This young and determined enthusiast had a power of flooding others
+with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made
+his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the
+goods."
+
+Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the
+sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a
+new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among
+them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's
+determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes,
+and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that
+astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness.
+When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to
+blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.
+
+Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win
+Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path
+which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with
+Charmian.
+
+Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which
+had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced
+his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul,
+but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very
+un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the
+complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the
+obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love
+of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as
+he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an
+egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical
+development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.
+
+"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no
+doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.
+
+He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera,
+and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.
+
+Having launched the song with success, Alston Lake naturally wished to
+hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He
+was interested in it, admired it. But--and here his wholly unconscious
+egoism came into play--he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of
+belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words
+from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or
+training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said
+straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing
+her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved
+and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come
+out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about
+art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which
+he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to
+compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both
+meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely
+diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent
+was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of
+pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake
+in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up
+like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which
+they urged Claude to walk.
+
+He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting
+of the _Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But
+before it was finished--and during the season his time for work was
+limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and
+Alston Lake involved him--an event took place which had led directly to
+the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob
+Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve.
+And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his
+patron hearing Claude's song.
+
+Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big
+proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness
+for Lake, and Lake's boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some
+attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time.
+But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently
+this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet.
+But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was
+something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was
+Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her
+"darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her
+husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you
+wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the
+little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he
+hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about
+running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."
+
+"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed
+Charmian demurely.
+
+From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on
+an opera.
+
+Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had
+come to London again in June. The _Paradis Terrestre_ had been revived
+at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.
+
+"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night
+in his studio.
+
+Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and
+had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on
+their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of
+his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped
+for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking
+lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.
+
+"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have no bent toward the theater."
+
+Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray
+eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and
+rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box,
+and glanced at Charmian.
+
+"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone
+voice.
+
+Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs.
+Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.
+
+"Well--" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know--now."
+
+"Now, old chap?"
+
+"I mean I hardly know."
+
+"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston
+triumphantly.
+
+Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark
+hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more
+definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She
+glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening
+she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost
+miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly
+dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said
+nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
+
+"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and
+up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
+
+"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting
+managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that
+fires him."
+
+"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
+
+Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music
+and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly
+always in agreement.
+
+"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the
+big lad--he looked little more than a lad--good-naturedly.
+
+"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was
+Crayford."
+
+He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.
+
+"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet.
+He's going to make me."
+
+"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.
+
+"Takes two to do it!"
+
+Again he looked over to Charmian.
+
+"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera
+singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be.
+Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to
+me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who
+knows--_knows_, mind you--to put him in the right way. What is wanted
+nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here,
+I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted
+Crayford to hear your big things"--Claude shifted in his chair,
+stretched out his legs and drew them up--"I told him about them and how
+strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At
+least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the
+nail--but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for
+the goods, you know--'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the
+Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to
+explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than
+Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said
+was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me
+a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how
+to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as
+Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a
+success we've had with the song!"
+
+"And _I_ found him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.
+
+"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I
+know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to
+Paris--"
+
+"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.
+
+"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like,
+my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing
+at all."
+
+"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?"
+said Alston. "Didn't you win----?"
+
+"Go--go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a
+mock despair.
+
+He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as
+a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit
+to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:
+
+"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris
+with Alston Lake."
+
+"What--to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."
+
+"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.
+
+Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let
+his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto,
+written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served
+for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then
+studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong.
+There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the
+whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and
+Lake so.
+
+"It would need to be as Oriental in the score as _Louise_ is French," he
+said. "And what do I know----"
+
+"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a
+couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford
+says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or
+two."
+
+"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.
+
+"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by
+Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what
+they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."
+
+And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of
+scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.
+
+As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.
+
+Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston
+Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in
+London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all
+his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already
+been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the
+most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless
+energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him
+was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room,
+with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had
+been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews
+itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into
+the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously
+exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all
+the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man
+among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be
+gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object
+now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object
+when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any
+object in working--in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing
+itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was
+created he had passed on to something else.
+
+Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very
+strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light
+surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of
+dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but
+solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached
+to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via
+Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.
+
+As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying on the hall-table.
+Two letters for him, and--ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and
+Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful
+Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his
+name was fairly often in the papers.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and
+artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near
+Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly
+unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."
+
+Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was
+wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall.
+Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had
+become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted
+to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his
+"interests." And yet--and yet--
+
+Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become
+accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very
+grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she--was
+she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants
+that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in
+Algiers when they were quite alone together?
+
+He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.
+
+He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.
+
+She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her
+eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.
+
+As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought
+she looked very sad.
+
+"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."
+
+"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"
+
+He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for
+a moment.
+
+"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.
+
+Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him.
+He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.
+
+"If you want me."
+
+"If!"
+
+"I'm not quite sure that you will."
+
+Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out
+into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which
+till that moment he had scarcely been aware?
+
+"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I
+know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."
+
+"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."
+
+"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"
+
+"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"
+
+Claude sighed.
+
+"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed
+to be within reach of you."
+
+"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily
+never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are
+withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."
+
+"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+He moved rather uneasily.
+
+"I--I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still--still we
+sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not
+natural to us."
+
+"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from
+unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen
+our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means
+of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to
+us."
+
+"What means?"
+
+"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to
+us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate
+it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it
+continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.
+I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I
+expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"
+
+Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes
+sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.
+
+"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"
+
+"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."
+
+"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."
+
+She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of
+Romeike and Curtice.
+
+"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear,
+slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A
+year--two years, perhaps--out of the world! It will be a new experience
+for me, won't it, Madretta?"
+
+"Quite new."
+
+The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
+
+"And I shall see the island with you."
+
+"The island?" he said.
+
+"Don't you remember--the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined
+here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in
+an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about
+the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.
+But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and
+sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again,
+better than the truth, because _I_ was added to them. Don't you
+remember, Claudie?"
+
+"Yes, now I remember."
+
+"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
+
+Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Charmian and her husband went first to the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha
+Supérieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there
+for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a
+hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up
+the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in
+Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money
+to throw away.
+
+During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of
+work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in
+upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That
+spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to
+his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which,
+carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life
+running its course in the darkness of his soul.
+
+In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.
+And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The
+phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted
+her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England
+or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their
+time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the
+production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly
+with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of
+"steeping" her husband.
+
+She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had
+sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be
+worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She
+honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she
+was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to
+Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their
+coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was
+sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to
+his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to
+Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his
+precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.
+
+But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.
+You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first
+she began to assert herself in your art life."
+
+And he kept silence.
+
+Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's
+love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish
+from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.
+
+She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too
+concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as
+she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was
+it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another--a not
+completely hidden reason?
+
+Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the
+garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in
+England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a
+Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian,
+and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the
+edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.
+
+And presently she said:
+
+"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."
+
+Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the
+curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned
+on the seat and looked at her.
+
+"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.
+
+Something in his eyes almost startled her.
+
+"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."
+
+He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an
+expression which made her feel almost uneasy.
+
+"Something here"--she almost faltered, called on her will, and
+continued--"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here
+some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"
+
+"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.
+
+She thought his voice sounded insincere.
+
+"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here
+for our honeymoon."
+
+"I thought of it. I wanted to."
+
+"Then why didn't you?"
+
+"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."
+
+"And now the right time has come?"
+
+"Yes, now it has come."
+
+She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That
+curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had
+troubled her spirit.
+
+The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down
+the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red
+roses in his earthy hand.
+
+He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the
+garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw
+him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was
+hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener
+spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and
+blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he
+seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with
+the old man and began to talk with him.
+
+It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.
+
+That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:
+
+"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."
+
+"Old Robert!"
+
+"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things
+about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests
+me--us--is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year,
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in good repair, pure Arab in style, so
+he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But
+there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here
+in the best part of Mustapha Inférieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"
+
+"Isn't it rather late?"
+
+"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.
+
+"Yes, let us go to-morrow."
+
+Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude,
+and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the
+high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the
+hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one
+could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de
+Manoeuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of
+the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old
+Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the
+white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two
+tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the
+roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden
+door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was
+roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small
+stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the
+bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The
+house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles,
+confronted them, holding its many secrets.
+
+"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.
+
+"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.
+
+"I know it will do."
+
+She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its
+mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the
+faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with
+multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the
+low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery
+running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low
+black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a
+background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables
+suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness
+and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
+into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
+when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
+him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
+addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
+been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
+formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
+the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
+Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
+purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
+distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
+opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
+the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
+lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
+a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
+beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
+time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
+curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
+tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
+dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
+of the crowding houses of the town.
+
+It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
+the studio in Renwick Place.
+
+"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.
+
+The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
+containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
+dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
+Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
+geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
+and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.
+
+Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
+astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
+Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
+house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
+soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
+at Staouëli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
+and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently
+fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief
+which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little
+woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets,
+charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on
+her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the
+courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had
+first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had
+always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to
+the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone.
+She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed
+in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.
+
+Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the
+future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had
+had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to
+whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes,
+tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his
+orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him.
+It was her rôle to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging.
+But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with
+its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and
+because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities,
+passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to
+Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied.
+Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a _milieu_
+where they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three
+casually met in the Hôtel St. George, and the British Consul-General and
+his wife, who had been to call on them.
+
+Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them
+during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat."
+She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab
+house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had
+carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places
+for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with
+Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost
+overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a
+great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands
+her true feeling abruptly.
+
+In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a
+full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests,
+occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to
+look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now
+confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear.
+He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the
+real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of
+such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so,
+for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his
+life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going
+to do?
+
+Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for
+popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they
+wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But
+now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of
+him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa
+he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of
+every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather
+strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the
+contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who
+would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the
+force which he had often felt in London, a force which had often
+secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without
+tonic properties.
+
+With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was
+ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed
+task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He
+laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of
+inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him
+to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of
+work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that
+something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square,
+when he read Carlyle's _French Revolution_ and sometimes felt criminal.
+There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not
+Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were
+broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he
+could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he
+began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do
+a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel
+inclined to or not."
+
+Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in,
+more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of
+living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete
+novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his
+brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual
+activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to
+give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera
+was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!
+
+Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan
+Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on
+theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant
+inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply
+because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she
+had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going"
+to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy
+and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the
+opportunity presented itself.
+
+Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater,
+among them _The Astral Plane_, _Reincarnation_, _Death--and After?_ and
+_The Seven Principles of Man_. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet,
+Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the
+manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no
+propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If
+Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The
+letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When
+Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task
+which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for
+Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for
+herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather
+vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and
+patience. Just now--indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would
+need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long
+preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's
+with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
+she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
+so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
+Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing _Le
+Paradis Terrestre_, how long he had taken in the creation of that
+stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.
+
+She had begun with _The Seven Principles of Man_. The short preface had
+attracted her. "Life easier to bear--death easier to face." If theosophy
+helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
+inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
+But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
+in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
+she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
+crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
+attention of the world--they were all so far away.
+
+Resolutely she read _The Seven Principles of Man_.
+
+Then she dipped into _Reincarnation_ and _Death--and After?_
+
+Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
+received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
+illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
+read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
+with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
+in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
+renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
+traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
+unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
+she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
+thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
+her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint--as, say,
+Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
+certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
+nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
+hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
+her life.
+
+Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
+began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.
+
+One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
+above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
+for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
+leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
+dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
+permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
+playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
+be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
+could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
+them.
+
+Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
+the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
+family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
+Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and
+sent him a cheque of £100 for his work.
+
+Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
+a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
+handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
+and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
+curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
+covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.
+
+Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
+cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
+son, but who was now resigned to the latter's _étranges folies_. The
+fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
+then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
+down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
+of him.
+
+When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
+received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
+denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
+ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
+the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
+with him, and preparing him for Claude.
+
+This man must "fire" Claude.
+
+Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
+the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
+mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
+upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of
+good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he
+changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success
+for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality,
+he exclaimed:
+
+"_Eh bien_, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"
+
+Charmian looked at him and hesitated.
+
+"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and
+suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle, morbid perhaps?
+Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful
+imaginings?"
+
+Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled
+at the upward-pointing ends.
+
+"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My
+libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to
+music must have lived also to do it justice."
+
+There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class,
+in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.
+
+Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly
+that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized
+the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for
+him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this
+short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help
+Claude to bridge that gulf.
+
+"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after
+happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been
+made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been
+arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided
+that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the
+defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among
+the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome
+India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole
+thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square,
+much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth
+was to become of her.
+
+In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist
+were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where
+Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs.
+Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and
+she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.
+
+She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.
+
+"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall
+be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so
+mixed up. Is the motor there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come along, then."
+
+At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would
+not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.
+
+"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.
+
+Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the
+motor. She now looked radiant, like one for whom life held nothing but
+good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking
+she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how
+handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing
+to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for
+the immediate future.
+
+"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over the _oeufs en
+cocotte_, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things
+lively.
+
+"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."
+
+"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her
+general expression hardly altered.
+
+"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"
+
+"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."
+
+"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last
+thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that
+song of his--I forget the name, heart something or other--her head has
+been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's
+sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers, _les
+jeunes_, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's
+too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too--Oliver
+Cromwell in Harris tweed!--she must be mad. Of course even if he ever
+finishes it he will never get it produced."
+
+Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.
+
+"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a
+celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."
+
+"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden,"
+observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.
+
+"Oh, yes, they had!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider
+facts.
+
+"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of
+sarcasm.
+
+"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have,
+in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"
+
+"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad
+cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."
+
+"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see
+why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."
+
+She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the
+Algerian visit.
+
+"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan--really think, I mean? Do
+you care for her?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."
+
+Susan smiled. "We are human beings."
+
+"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath
+with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and
+the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest
+me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the
+King and the crossing-sweeper?"
+
+"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."
+
+"In a woman!"
+
+"Greatly because she is a woman."
+
+"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"
+
+They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney
+suddenly said:
+
+"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."
+
+"But you don't want to go there."
+
+"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamers from Marseilles
+when the yacht is only about half an hour away."
+
+"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."
+
+"I said _about_ half an hour on purpose to be accurate."
+
+"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.
+
+This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived
+project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to
+Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht.
+Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that
+Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the
+tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had
+convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something
+else.
+
+"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers,"
+she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the
+beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your
+trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't
+have a comfortable voyage."
+
+"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a
+trace of vexation.
+
+That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to
+bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to
+Folkestone.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and
+to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a
+few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look
+in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.
+
+"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get
+away. And you'll see your protégé, Mr. Heath."
+
+"My protégé!"
+
+"Well, you were the first to discover him."
+
+"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so
+bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always
+the Heaths' very good friend."
+
+"Well, but his song?"
+
+"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has
+ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred
+words."
+
+"His wife and mother have, I believe."
+
+"His wife--yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them
+now."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there
+came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.
+
+"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the
+art of music?"
+
+"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I should think so, _mon cher_. I don't believe either you or I have a
+right to talk!"
+
+It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a
+moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."
+
+"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"
+
+"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose.
+Henriette wouldn't like that."
+
+"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a
+clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."
+
+"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new
+opera's getting on?"
+
+He glanced at her determined eyes.
+
+"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot
+of work on hand!"
+
+"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or--"
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost
+excited.
+
+"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New
+York this year."
+
+Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be
+carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimes even into absurdity. But he
+was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or
+taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.
+
+"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm
+sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a brilliant day in the first week of February _The Wanderer_ glided
+into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a
+discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her
+were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and
+Max Elliot.
+
+The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries
+of "_Ah, mon Dieu!_" and "_O la la là!_" had been distressing. Madame
+Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child,
+holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady,
+laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a
+moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau
+de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a
+muffler round his meager throat.
+
+"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the
+jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"
+
+"_Ah, mon Dieu! O la la là!_" replied her celebrated husband.
+
+"My little chicken, you must have courage!"
+
+Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned
+Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the
+simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they
+stepped into the _wagon-lit_ in Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:
+
+"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"
+
+As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her.
+Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Hôtel St. George. And Susan
+Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon with Max, Susan, about
+tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm
+sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel.
+Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."
+
+These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her
+thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to
+drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where
+the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the
+brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the
+movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods
+from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides,
+failed to rouse him.
+
+"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.
+
+"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a
+week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife,
+speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother
+reassuring a little child.
+
+When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone.
+Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost
+suspiciously, after the first kiss.
+
+"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"
+
+"She's gone to the Hôtel St. George."
+
+"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you
+let her come?"
+
+"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"
+
+"Adelaide hates me!"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"She does. And you know it."
+
+"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide
+can be very kind."
+
+"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in
+your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."
+
+"Have you read the manuals carefully?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil
+everything."
+
+"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."
+
+"But why did she come at all?"
+
+"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."
+
+"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I
+quite understand that. But he's not here."
+
+"What has become of him?"
+
+"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to
+you. But--well, the truth is"--she slightly lowered her voice, although
+there was no one in the room--"he had to go away for the opera. He has
+gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to
+study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a
+big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most
+valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways;
+with the opera, I mean."
+
+She stopped. Then she added:
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But
+before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course,
+she's on the other side."
+
+"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."
+
+"She's on Sennier's side."
+
+It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in
+a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:
+
+"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the
+manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you
+like."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh,
+I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two.
+Of course she knows about the opera?"
+
+"Yes, she does."
+
+"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never
+mind!"
+
+At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the
+sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment
+later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the
+drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max
+Elliot.
+
+"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round
+her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing
+worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy
+them."
+
+"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.
+
+"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."
+
+Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful
+face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar
+across it.
+
+"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."
+
+"Oh, she--she is charming; thin and charming."
+
+"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."
+
+He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked
+almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and
+shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable,
+even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but
+also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong,
+energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine
+eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments
+full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were
+rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.
+
+"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel
+species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen--milky
+mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very
+well, too--should"--he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently--"_go_
+with the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"
+
+The door had opened, and Charmian came in.
+
+Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.
+
+She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole
+face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she
+still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not
+help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.
+
+"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+"Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"
+
+"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"
+
+Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.
+
+Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the
+Senniers.
+
+"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously
+you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for
+your genius. We are all longing to see him."
+
+They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.
+
+"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the
+opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your
+orchestration?"
+
+"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings
+and the horns to give the effect of water."
+
+"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.
+
+Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.
+
+"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"
+
+"About Mr. Heath? Yes."
+
+"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.
+
+"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."
+
+Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem
+extraordinary, and added:
+
+"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."
+
+Her voice was reluctant.
+
+"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre
+promptly answered with the tea things.
+
+"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in
+the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear
+and telegraph."
+
+She spoke in her most airy way.
+
+"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."
+
+"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask
+who wrote the libretto?"
+
+Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.
+
+"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His
+name is Gillier."
+
+"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out
+his hands in a gesture of surprise.
+
+"Yes. Do you know him?"
+
+"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three
+libretti by him have I rejected--three, madame. He challenged me to a
+duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he
+cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband
+accepted?"
+
+Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant
+eyes--they were yellow eyes, and small--fixed upon her.
+
+"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.
+
+Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was
+clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can
+say!"
+
+"Brave! But why?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.
+
+"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."
+
+"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what
+does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"
+
+She had turned to Max Elliot.
+
+"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously
+ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the
+Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"
+
+She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a
+dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her
+immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because
+she was the hindmost. That was certain.
+
+Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went
+over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation
+with Madame Sennier.
+
+She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with
+her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was
+completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red
+mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame
+Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and
+disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge
+that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of
+ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously
+English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply.
+There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian
+felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she,
+Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or
+only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her
+wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered,
+too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.
+
+Presently Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was apt to be restless.
+
+"May we go and look about outside?" she said.
+
+"Of course. Shall I--"
+
+"No, no. I see you are interested in each other. Two wives of geniuses!
+I don't want to spoil it. Come, Jacques, let us explore."
+
+They went away to the court of the goldfish. Max Elliot followed them.
+As they went Madame Sennier fixed her eyes for a moment on her departing
+husband. In that moment Charmian found out something. Madame Sennier
+certainly cared for the man, as well as for the composer. Charmian
+fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for
+many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that
+she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong
+perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with
+someone far cleverer than herself. And she realized what an effective
+weapon in certain hands is an absolute lack of scruple. It seemed to her
+as she sat and talked, about Paris, America, London, art, music, that
+this woman must have divined her secret and intense ambition. Those
+yellow eyes had surely looked into her soul, and knew that she had
+brought Claude to Algeria in order that some day he might come forth as
+the rival of Jacques Sennier. Almost she felt guilty. She made a strong
+effort, and turned the conversation to the subject of the _Paradis
+Terrestre_, expressing her enthusiasm for it.
+
+Madame Sennier received the praises with an air of gracious
+indifference, as if her husband's opera were now so famous that it was
+scarcely worth while to talk about it. This carelessness accentuated
+brutally the difference between her position and Charmian's. And it
+stung Charmian into indiscretion. Something fiery and impetuous seemed
+to rise up in her, something that wanted to fight. She began to speak of
+her husband's talent.
+
+Madame Sennier listened politely, as one who listens on a height to
+small voices stealing vaguely up from below. Charmian began to underline
+things. It was as if one of the voices from below became strident in the
+determination to be adequately heard, to make its due effect. Finally
+she was betrayed into saying:
+
+"Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced."
+
+Madame Sennier stared.
+
+"But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my
+husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance."
+
+Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude
+would have hated the remark had he heard it.
+
+Madame Sennier seemed unimpressed, and at that moment the others came in
+from the garden. But Charmian, why she did not know, felt increasing
+regret for her inadvertence. She even wished that Madame Sennier had
+shown some emotion, surprise, even contemptuous incredulity. The
+complete blankness of the Frenchwoman at that moment made Charmian
+uneasy.
+
+When they were all going Mrs. Shiffney insisted on Charmian and Susan
+Fleet dining at the Hôtel St. George that evening. Charmian wanted to
+refuse and wished to go. Of course she accepted. She and Susan had no
+engagement to plead.
+
+Jacques Sennier clasped her hands on parting and gazed fervently into
+her eyes.
+
+[Illustration: "'OF COURSE WE WIVES OF COMPOSERS ARE APT TO BE
+PREJUDICED'"--_Page 242_]
+
+"Let me come sometimes and sit in your garden, may I, Madame?" he said,
+as if begging for some great boon. "Only"--he lowered his voice--"only
+till your husband comes back. There is inspiration here!"
+
+Charmian knew he was talking nonsense. Nevertheless she glanced round
+half in dread of Madame Sennier. The yellow eyes were smiling. The white
+face looked humorously sarcastic.
+
+"Of course! Whenever you like!" she said lightly.
+
+The monkeylike hands pressed hers more closely.
+
+"The freedom of Africa, you give it me!"
+
+He whisked round, with a sharp and absurd movement, and joined the
+others.
+
+"She is delicious!" he observed, as they walked away. "But she is very
+undeveloped. She has certainly never suffered. And no woman can be of
+much use to an artist unless she has suffered."
+
+"Henriette, have you suffered?" said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
+
+"Terribly!" said Jacques Sennier, answering for his wife. "But
+unfortunately not through me. That is the great flaw in our connection."
+
+He frowned.
+
+"I must make her suffer!" he muttered.
+
+"My cabbage, you are a little fool and you know it!" observed Madame
+Sennier imperturbably. "_Mon Dieu!_ What dust!"
+
+They had emerged into the road, and were enveloped in a cloud sent up by
+a passing motor.
+
+"If it doesn't rain, or they don't water the roads, I shall run away to
+Constantine," observed Mrs. Shiffney. "There'll be no dust in
+Constantine at this time of year."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just
+sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup
+tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.
+
+"What can that be?" said Charmian.
+
+She looked at Susan.
+
+"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."
+
+Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it
+high in his left hand.
+
+"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.
+
+All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had passed
+the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly
+discussing Charmian's affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had
+enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had
+said:
+
+"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don't understand how
+it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea--when
+it's calm--purifies a room if you open the window to it."
+
+But now, as she waited for Pierre's return, she felt strung up and
+excited.
+
+"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.
+
+"Would he ring?" asked Susan.
+
+"No. But he might!"
+
+At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a
+voice exclaiming:
+
+"_Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi passer, mon bon!_"
+
+"Surely it's Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past
+Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.
+
+"_Me voici!_" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I come to you. How
+can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They
+brought me caviare, _potage_. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
+Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I
+shall not disgrace you."
+
+"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned
+you?"
+
+"Everyone--Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have
+taken me, but I refused to go."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Batna, Biskra, _que sais-je_? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"
+
+He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.
+
+"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once--may I?"
+
+Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin
+toward his collar.
+
+"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said
+to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the
+arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot
+write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a
+revolver? It shall not be!"
+
+"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said
+Charmian sharply.
+
+"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara--_que sais-je_?
+Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my
+Henriette."
+
+He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very
+late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the
+piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of
+emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did
+he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey
+and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel
+embarrassed or self-conscious.
+
+At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully
+preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her
+preoccupation down. He was an egoist, but a singularly amusing and even
+attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and
+delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great
+success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier
+she was more sharply aware of Claude's reserve than she had ever been
+before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social
+readiness.
+
+When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed,
+she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited,
+intensely excited.
+
+It was past one o'clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on
+the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there,
+except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
+and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He
+resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he
+permitted her to button the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera
+he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his
+hotel.
+
+"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The
+Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"
+
+When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
+Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
+because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
+instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
+coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
+gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
+with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
+she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
+Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
+apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
+returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
+either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
+interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
+they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
+she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of
+her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do
+much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.
+
+Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
+blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
+resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
+wished her "Good-night."
+
+"I know I shan't sleep," she said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."
+
+"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."
+
+Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
+of resolving quietly on anything.
+
+She lay awake nearly all night.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
+night-train travelling to Constantine.
+
+It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
+abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
+garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
+to the big terrace, and had said:
+
+"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
+to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."
+
+Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
+had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
+to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.
+
+Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly
+a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow
+berth in the _wagon-lit_ jolting toward Constantine, he read some of
+Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard
+voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier
+were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That
+fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.
+
+"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.
+
+"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven and earth to find a
+genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in _les
+jeunes_."
+
+"Jacques is forty."
+
+"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."
+
+"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to
+compose an opera?"
+
+"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.
+She could never have kept such a thing to herself."
+
+"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that
+nobody on earth would ever listen to."
+
+"I should like to see the libretto."
+
+"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is
+dreadful."
+
+"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame
+Sennier.
+
+"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."
+
+"No, it can't be."
+
+"What?"
+
+"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this
+one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."
+
+"Make him show it to you."
+
+"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."
+
+"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.
+
+"Claude Heath--or I'll make him."
+
+"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the
+Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a
+hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine,
+and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might
+succeed some day."
+
+"I'll get hold of it for you."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do
+you think?"
+
+"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never interfere with him.
+Nobody but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."
+
+"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"
+
+At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and
+Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost
+simultaneous hushes.
+
+Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the
+conversation which reached him.
+
+He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to
+their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that
+these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were
+driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something
+secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided
+to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly
+disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of
+other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between
+Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.
+Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd,
+he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish
+that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path
+clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of
+every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.
+
+Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the
+nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very
+little about her.
+
+She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's
+family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness
+that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.
+Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess.
+Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been
+very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had
+throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some
+women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and
+underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.
+She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the
+midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When
+she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected
+with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable
+to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques
+was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped
+to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was
+capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.
+
+Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He
+was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at
+Mustapha within a week.
+
+After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.
+
+"It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for
+the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still
+more when Madame Sennier replied:
+
+"I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being
+where you are."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney made no reply, but turned carefully over till she was
+looking at the wall.
+
+"Why do I do things for this woman?" was her thought. She had told
+herself more than once that she was travelling to Constantine for
+Henriette. Apparently she was actually beginning to believe her own
+statement. She closed her eyes, opened them again, looked at the
+ceiling, which almost touched her nose, and at the wall, which her nose
+almost touched.
+
+"Why does a woman ever do anything for another woman?" she asked
+herself, amplifying her first thought.
+
+Adelaide Shiffney in an upper berth! It was the incredible
+accomplished!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"What a setting for melodrama!" said Mrs. Shiffney. She was standing on
+the balcony of a corner room on the second floor of the Grand Hotel at
+Constantine, looking down on the Place de la Brèche. Evening was
+beginning to fall. The city roared a tumultuous serenade to its delicate
+beauty. The voices sent up from the dusty gardens, the squares, and the
+winding alleys, from the teeming bazaars, the dancing-houses, the houses
+of pleasure, and the painted Moorish cafés, seemed to grow more defiant
+as the light grew colder on the great slopes of the mountains that
+surround Constantine, as in the folds of the shallow valleys the
+plantations of eucalyptus darkened beside the streams.
+
+Madame Sennier was standing with Mrs. Shiffney and was also looking
+down.
+
+"Listen to all the voices!" she said. "Nobody but Jacques could ever get
+this sort of effect into an opera."
+
+A huge diligence, painted yellow, green, and red, with an immense hood
+beneath which crowded Arabs vaguely showed, came slowly down the hill,
+drawn by seven gray horses. The military Governor passed by on
+horseback, preceded by a mounted soldier, and followed by two more
+soldiers and by a Spahi, whose red jacket gleamed against the white coat
+of his prancing stallion. Bugles sounded; bells rang; a donkey brayed
+with dreary violence in a side street. Somewhere a mandoline was being
+thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the
+Paris pavements. In the large cafés just below the balcony where the two
+women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables,
+sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the
+Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of
+well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with
+high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered
+looking like conquerors.
+
+"_Cirez! Cirez!"_ cried incessantly the Arab boot-polishers, who
+scuffled and played tricks among themselves while they waited for
+customers. "_Cirez, moosou! Cirez!_" Long wagons, loaded with stone from
+the quarries of the Gorge, jangled by, some of them drawn by mixed teams
+of eleven horses and mules, on whose necks chimed collars of bells.
+Chauffeurs sounded the horns of their motors as they slowly crept
+through the nonchalant crowd of natives, which had gathered in front of
+the post-office and the Municipal Theater to discuss the affairs of the
+day. Maltese coachmen, seated on the boxes of large landaus, cracked
+their whips to announce to the Kabyle Chasseurs of the two hotels the
+return of travellers from their excursions. Omnibuses rolled slowly up
+from the station loaded with luggage, which was vehemently grasped by
+native porters, brought to earth, and carried in with eager violence.
+The animation of the city was intense, and had in it something barbaric
+and almost savage, something that seemed undisciplined, bred of the
+orange and red soil, of the orange and red rocks, of the snow and
+sun-smitten mountains, of the terrific gorges and precipices which made
+the landscape vital and almost terrible.
+
+Yet in the evening light the distant slopes, the sharply cut silhouettes
+of the hills, held a strange and exquisitely delicate serenity. The sky,
+cloudless, shot with primrose, blue, and green, deepening toward the
+West into a red that was flecked with gold, was calm and almost tender.
+Nature showed two sides of her soul; but humanity seemed to respond only
+to the side that was fierce and violent.
+
+"What a setting for melodrama!" repeated Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She sighed. At that moment the presence of Henriette irritated her. She
+wanted to be alone, leaning to watch this ever-shifting torrent of
+humanity. This balcony belonged to her room. She had revenged herself
+for the upper berth by securing a room much better placed than
+Henriette's. But if Henriette intended to live in it--
+
+Suddenly she drew back rather sharply. She had just seen, in the midst
+of the crowd, the tall figure of Claude Heath moving toward the café
+immediately opposite to her balcony.
+
+"Is my tea never coming?" she said. "I think I shall get into a tea-gown
+and lie down a little before dinner."
+
+Madame Sennier followed her into the room.
+
+"Till dinner, then," she said. "We are sure to see them, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course. Leave the libretto entirely to me. He would be certain to
+suspect any move on your part."
+
+Madame Sennier's white face looked very hard as she nodded and left the
+room. She met the waiter bringing Mrs. Shiffney's tea at the door.
+
+When she and the waiter were both gone Mrs. Shiffney drank her tea on
+the balcony, sitting largely on a cane chair. She felt agreeably
+excited. Claude Heath had gone into the café on the other side of the
+road, and was now sitting alone at a little table on the terrace which
+projects into the Place beneath the Hôtel de Paris. Mrs. Shiffney saw a
+waiter take his order and bring him coffee, while a little Arab,
+kneeling, set to work on his boots.
+
+All day long Claude and Gillier had remained invisible. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Henriette, and Max Elliot, after visiting the native quarters in the
+morning, had expected to see the two men at lunch, but they had not
+appeared. Now the two women had just returned from a drive round the
+city and to the suspension bridge which spans the terror of the Gorge.
+And here was Claude Heath just opposite to Mrs. Shiffney, no doubt
+serenely unconscious of her presence in Constantine! As Mrs. Shiffney
+sipped her tea and looked down at him she thought again, "What a setting
+for melodrama!"
+
+She was a very civilized child of her age, and believed that she had a
+horror of melodrama, looking upon it as a degraded form of art, or
+artlessness, which pleased people whom she occasionally saw but would
+never know. But this evening some part of her almost desired it, not as
+a spectacle, but as something in which she could take an active part. In
+this town she felt adventurous. It was difficult to look at this crowd
+without thinking of violent lives and deeds of violence. It was
+difficult to look at Claude Heath without the desire to pay him back
+here with interest for a certain indifference.
+
+"But I'm not really melodramatic," said Adelaide Shiffney to herself.
+
+She could resent, but she was not a very good hater. She felt generally
+too _affairée_, too civilized to hate. In her heart she rather disliked
+Claude Heath as once she had rather liked him. He had had the
+impertinence and lack of taste to decline her friendship, tacitly, of
+course, but quite definitely. She had never been in love with him. If
+she had been she would have been more definite with him. But he had
+attracted her a good deal; and she always resented even the crossing of
+a whim. Something in his personality and something in his physique had
+appealed to her, a strangeness and height, an imaginativeness and
+remoteness which features and gesture often showed in despite of his
+intention. He was not like everybody. It would have been interesting to
+take him in hand. It had certainly been irritating to make no impression
+upon him. And now he was married and living in a delicious Arab nest
+with that foolish Charmian Mansfield. So Mrs. Shiffney called Charmian
+at that moment. Suddenly she felt rather melancholy and rather cross.
+She wanted to give somebody a slap. She put down her tea-cup, lit a
+cigarette, and drew her chair to the rail of the balcony.
+
+Claude Heath was sipping his coffee. One long-fingered musical hand lay
+on his knee. His soft hat was tilted a little forward over the eyes that
+were watching the crowd. Probably he was thinking about his opera.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was incapable of Henriette's hard and bitter
+determination. Her love was not fastened irrevocably on any man. She
+wished that it was, or thought she did. Such a passion must give a new
+interest to life. Often she fancied she was in love; but the feeling
+passed, and she bemoaned its passing. Henriette was determined to keep a
+clear field for her composer. She was ready to be suspicious, to be
+jealous of every musical shadow. Mrs. Shiffney found herself wishing
+that she had Henriette's incentive as she looked at Claude Heath. She
+could not see his face quite clearly. Perhaps when she did--
+
+That he should have married that silly Charmian Mansfield! Ever since
+then Mrs. Shiffney had resolved to wipe them both off her
+slate--gradually. Charmian had been right in her supposition. But now
+Mrs. Shiffney thought she was perhaps on the edge of something that
+might be more amusing than a mere wiping off the slate.
+
+Of course Claude Heath and Gillier would be at dinner. It would be
+rather fun to see Claude's face when she walked in with Henriette and
+Max Elliot.
+
+She got up and stood by the rail; and now she looked down on Claude with
+intention, willing that he should look up at her. Why should not she
+have the fun of seeing his surprise while she was alone? Why should she
+share with Henriette?
+
+Without turning his eyes in her direction Claude rapped on his table
+with a piece of money, paid a waiter for his coffee, got up, made his
+way out of the café, and mingled with the crowd. He did not come toward
+the hotel, but turned up the street leading to the Governor's palace and
+disappeared. Mrs. Shiffney noticed an Arab in a blue jacket and a white
+burnous, who joined him as he left the café.
+
+"Local color, I suppose," she murmured to herself. She wished she could
+go off like that in the strange and violent crowd, could be quite
+independent.
+
+"What a curse it is to be a woman!" she thought.
+
+Then she resolved after dinner to go out for a stroll with Claude.
+Henriette should not come. If she, Adelaide Shiffney, were going to work
+for Henriette she must be left to work in her own way. She thought of
+the little intrigue that was on foot, and smiled. Then she looked out
+beyond the Place, over the dusty public gardens and the houses, to the
+far-off, serene, bare mountains. For a moment their calm outlines held
+her eyes. For a moment the clamor of voices from below seemed to die out
+of her ears. Then she shivered, drew back into her room, and felt for
+the knob of the electric light. Darkness was falling, and it was growing
+cold on this rocky height which frowned above the gorge of the Rummel.
+
+Neither Claude Heath nor Gillier appeared at dinner. Their absence was
+discussed by Mrs. Shiffney and her friends, and Mrs. Shiffney told them
+that she had seen Claude Heath that evening in a café. After dinner
+Henriette Sennier remarked discontentedly:
+
+"What are we going to do?"
+
+"Max, why don't you get a guide and take Henriette out to see some
+dancing? There is dancing only five minutes from here," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+"Well, but you--aren't you coming?"
+
+She had exchanged a glance with Henriette.
+
+"I must write some letters. If I'm not too long over them perhaps I'll
+follow you. I can't miss you. All the dancing is in the same street."
+
+"But I don't think there are any dancing women here."
+
+"The Kabyle boys dance. Go to see them, and I'll probably follow you."
+
+As soon as they were gone Mrs. Shiffney put on a fur coat, summoned an
+Arab called Amor, who had already spoken to her at the door of the
+hotel, and said to him:
+
+"You know the tall Englishman who is staying here?"
+
+"The one who takes Aloui as guide?"
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know. But he is fond of music; he--"
+
+"It is Aloui's Englishman," interrupted Amor, calmly.
+
+"Where does he go at night? He's a friend of mine. I should like to meet
+him."
+
+"He might be with Said Hitani."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"If madame does not mind a little walk--"
+
+"Take me there. Is it far?"
+
+"It is on the edge of the town, close to the wall. When Said Hitani
+plays he likes to go there. He is growing old. He does not want to play
+where everybody can hear. Madame has a family in England?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney satisfied Amor's curiosity as they walked through the
+crowded streets till they came to the outskirts of the city. The stars
+were out, but there was no moon. The road ran by the city wall. Far down
+below, in the arms of the darkness, lay the gorge, from which rose
+faintly the sound of water; lay the immense stretches of yellow-brown
+and red-brown country darkened here and there with splashes of green;
+the dim plantations, the cascades which fall to the valley of Sidi
+Imcin; the long roads, like flung-out ribands, winding into the great
+distances which suggest eternal things. From the darkness, as from the
+mouth of a mighty cavern, rose a wind, not strong, very pure, very keen,
+which seemed dashed with the spray of water. Now and then an Arab
+passed muffled in burnous and hood, a fold of linen held to his mouth.
+The noise of the city was hushed.
+
+Presently Amor stood still.
+
+"_Voilà_ Said Hitani!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney heard in the distance a sound of music. Several
+instruments combined to make it, but the voice of a flute was dominant
+among them. Light, sweet, delicate, it came to her in the night like a
+personality full of odd magic, full of small and subtle surprises,
+intricate, gay, and sad.
+
+"Said Hitani!" she said. "He's delicious! Take me to him, Amor."
+
+She knew at once that he was the flute-player.
+
+They walked on, and soon came to a patch of light on the empty road.
+This was shed by the lamps of the café from which the music issued.
+Under the two windows, which were protected by wire and by iron bars,
+five Arabs were squatting, immersed in a sea of garments in which their
+figures and even their features were lost. Only their black eyes looked
+out, gazing steadily into the darkness. A big man, with bare legs and a
+spotted turban, came to the door of the café to invite them to go in;
+but Mrs. Shiffney refused by a gesture.
+
+"In a minute!" she said to Amor.
+
+Amor spoke in Arabic to the attendant, who at once returned to the
+coffee niche. Within the music never ceased, and now singing voices
+alternated with the instruments. Mrs. Shiffney kept away from the door
+and looked into the room through the window space next to it.
+
+She saw a long and rather narrow chamber, with a paved floor, strewn
+with clean straw mats, blue-green walls, and an orange-colored ceiling.
+Close to the door was the coffee niche. At the opposite end of the room
+five musicians were squatting, four in a semicircle facing the coffee
+niche, the fifth alone, almost facing them. This fifth was Said Hitani,
+the famous flute-player of Constantine--a man at this time sixty-three
+years old. In front of him was a flat board, on which lay two freshly
+rolled cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his
+flute from his lips, replaced it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a
+moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a
+virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his
+companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its
+end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large
+guitar; the third a derbouka; and the fourth a tarah, or native
+tambourine, ornamented with ten little discs of brass, which made a soft
+clashing sound when shaken. On the left of the room, down one side,
+squatted a row of Arabs with coffee-cups and cigarettes. By the door two
+more were playing a game of draughts. And opposite to the windows, on an
+Oriental rug, the long figure of Claude Heath was stretched out. He lay
+with his hat tilted to the left over one temple, his cheek on his left
+hand, listening intently to the music. On a wooden board beside him was
+some music paper, and now and then with a stylograph he jotted down some
+notes. He looked both emotional and thoughtful. Often his imaginative
+eyes rested on the small and hunched-up figure of Said Hitani, dressed
+in white, black, and gold, with a hood drawn over the head. Now and then
+he looked toward the window, and it seemed to Mrs. Shiffney then that
+his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing, except perhaps some Eastern
+vision summoned up by his lit imagination.
+
+The music very gradually quickened and grew louder, became steadily more
+masculine, powerful, and fierce, till it sounded violent. The volume of
+tone produced by the players astonished Mrs. Shiffney. The wild vagaries
+of the flute seemed presently to be taking place in her brain. She drew
+close to the window, put her hands on the bars. At her feet the
+crouching Arabs never stirred. Behind her the cold wind came up from the
+gorge and the great open country with the sound of the rushing water.
+
+At that moment she had the thing that she believed she lived for--a
+really keen sensation.
+
+Suddenly, when the music had become almost intolerably exciting, when
+the players seemed possessed, and noise and swiftness to rush together
+like foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried
+out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the
+derbouka the brown fingers of the player pattered with abrupt
+feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and
+fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height,
+and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the musicians
+began to smoke.
+
+[Illustration: "AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS NEVER STIRRED"--_Page
+258_]
+
+"Now I'll go in!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Amor.
+
+He led the way and she followed. Claude glanced up, stared for a moment,
+then sprang up.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney!"
+
+His voice was almost stern.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney!" he repeated.
+
+"Come to hear your music, for I know they are all playing only for you
+and the opera."
+
+Her strong, almost masculine hand lingered in his, and how could he let
+it go without impoliteness?
+
+"Aren't they?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"It's wonderful the way they play. Said Hitani is an artist."
+
+"You know his name?"
+
+"And I must know him. May I stay a little?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+He looked round for a seat.
+
+"No, the rug!" she said.
+
+And, despite her bulk, she sank down with a swift ease that was almost
+Oriental.
+
+"Now please introduce me to Said Hitani!"
+
+Till late in the night she stayed between the blue-green walls,
+listening to the vehement voices and to the instruments, following all
+the strange journeys of Said Hitani's flute. She was genuinely
+fascinated, and this fact made her fascinating. As she had caught at Max
+Elliot that day when he asked her, against his intention, to meet Claude
+Heath, so now she caught at Claude Heath himself. She had come to the
+café with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never
+before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position
+in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful
+naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her
+humor took him captive for the moment. She explained that she had left
+her companions and stolen away to enjoy Constantine alone.
+
+"And now I'm interrupting you. But you must forgive me just for this one
+night!"
+
+Through Amor, who acted as interpreter, she carried on a lively
+intercourse with Said Hitani. The other musicians smiled, but seldom
+spoke, and only among themselves. But Said Hitani, the great artist of
+his native city, a man famous far and wide among the Arabs, was
+infinitely diverting and descriptive in talk even as when he gave
+himself to the flute. With an animation that was youthful he described
+the meaning of each new song. He had two flutes on which he played
+alternately--"Mousou et Madame," he called them. And he knew, so he
+declared, over a hundred songs. Mrs. Shiffney, speaking to him always
+through Amor, told him of London, and what a sensation he and his
+companions would make there in the _décor_ of a Moorish café. Said
+Hitani pulled his little gray beard with his delicate hands, swayed to
+and fro, and smiled. Then sharply he uttered a torrent of words which
+seemed almost to fight their way out of some chamber in his narrow
+throat.
+
+"Said Hitani says you have only to send money and the address and they
+are all coming whenever you like. They are very pleased to come."
+
+At this point one of the musicians, a fair man with pale eyes who played
+the tarah, interposed a remark which was uttered with great seriousness.
+
+"Can they go to London on camels, he wishes to know," observed Amor
+gently.
+
+Said Hitani waited for Mrs. Shiffney's answer with a slightly judicial
+air, moving his head as if in approval of the tarah-player's
+forethought.
+
+"I'm afraid they can't."
+
+The tarah-player spoke again.
+
+"He says, can they go on donkeys?"
+
+"No. It is further than Paris, tell him."
+
+"Then they must go on the sea. Paris is across the sea."
+
+"Yes, they will have to take a steamer."
+
+At this juncture it was found that the tarah-player would not be of the
+party.
+
+"He says he would be very sick, and no man can play when he is sick."
+
+"What will Madame pay?" interposed Said Hitani.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney declared seriously that she would think it over, make a
+calculation, and Amor should convey her decision as to price to him on
+the morrow.
+
+All seemed well satisfied with this. And the tarah-player remarked,
+after a slight pause, that he would wait to know about the price before
+he decided whether he would be too sick to play in London. Then, at a
+signal from Said Hitani, they all took up their instruments and played
+and sang a garden song called _Mabouf_, describing how a Sheik and his
+best loved wife walked in a great garden and sang one against the other.
+
+"It has been quite delicious!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude, when at
+last the song _Au Revoir_, tumultuously brilliant with a tremendous
+crescendo at the close, had been played, and with many salaams and good
+wishes the musicians had departed.
+
+"I love their playing," Claude answered. "But really you shouldn't have
+paid them. I have arranged with Hitani to come every evening."
+
+"Oh, but I paid them for wanting to know whether they could go to London
+on camels. What a success your opera ought to be if you have got a fine
+libretto."
+
+They were just leaving the café.
+
+"Do let us stand by the wall for a minute," she added. "By that tree. It
+is so wonderful here."
+
+Claude's guide, Aloui, had come to accompany him home, and was behind
+with Amor. They stayed in the doorway of the café. Mrs. Shiffney and
+Claude leaned on the wall, looking down into the vast void from which
+rose the cool wind and the sound of water.
+
+"What would I give to be a creative artist!" she said. "That must add so
+much meaning to all this. Do you know how fortunate you are? Do you know
+you possess the earth?"
+
+The sable sleeve of her coat touched Claude's arm and hand. Her deep
+voice sounded warm and full of genuine feeling. A short time ago, when
+she had come into the café, he had been both astonished and vexed to see
+her. Now he knew that he had enjoyed this evening more than any other
+evening that he had spent in Constantine.
+
+"But there are plenty of drawbacks," he said.
+
+"Oh, no, not real ones! After this evening--well, I shall wish for your
+success. Till now I didn't care in the least. Indeed, I believe I hoped
+you never would have a great success."
+
+She moved slightly nearer to him.
+
+"Did you?" he said.
+
+"Yes. You've always been so horrid to me, when I always wanted to be
+nice to you."
+
+"Oh, but--"
+
+"Don't let us talk about it. What does it matter now? I thought I might
+have done something for you once, have helped you on a little, perhaps.
+But now you are married and settled and will make your own way. I feel
+it. You don't want anyone's help. You've come away from us all, and how
+right you've been. And Charmian's done the right thing, too, giving up
+all our nonsense for your work. Sacrifice means success. You are bound
+to have it. I feel you are going to. Ah, you don't know how I sometimes
+long to be linked, really linked, to the striving, the abnegation, the
+patience, the triumph of a man of genius! People envy my silly little
+position, as they call it. And what is it worth? And yet I do know, I
+have an instinct, a flair, for the real thing. I'm ignorant. I can dare
+to acknowledge it to you. But I can tell what is good and bad, and
+sometimes even why a thing is good. I'm led away, of course. In a silly
+social life like mine everybody is led away. We can't help it. But I
+could have been worth something in the art life of a big man, if I'd
+loved him."
+
+How soft sable is against a hand!
+
+"I'm sure you could," Claude said.
+
+"And as it is--"
+
+She stopped speaking abruptly. Then with a marked change of voice she
+said:
+
+"Oh, do forgive me for committing the unpardonable sin--babbling about
+myself! You're the only person I have ever--Forget all about it, won't
+you? I don't know why I did it. It was the music, I suppose, and the
+strangeness of this place, and thinking of your work and your hopes for
+the future. It made me wish I had some too, either for myself or
+for--for someone like you."
+
+As if irresistibly governed by feeling her voice had again changed,
+become once more warm as with emotion. But now she drew herself up a
+little and laughed.
+
+"Don't be afraid! It's over! But you have had a glimpse no one else has
+ever had, and I know you'll keep it to yourself. Let's talk of something
+else--anything. Tell me something about your libretto, if you care to."
+
+As they walked slowly toward the heart of the city, followed by the two
+Arabs, she took Claude's arm, very naturally, as if half for protection,
+half because it was dark and false steps were possible.
+
+And he told her a good deal, finally a great deal, about the libretto.
+
+"It sounds wonderful!" she said. "I'm so glad! But may I give you a
+little bit of advice?"
+
+"Yes, do."
+
+"Don't say anything about it to Henriette--Madame Sennier."
+
+"No. But--"
+
+"Why not? I scarcely know. My instinct! Don't!"
+
+"I won't," Claude said.
+
+"I'd give anything to read it. But if I were you I wouldn't let anyone
+read it. As you probably know, I'm in half the secrets of the artistic
+world, and always have been. But there isn't one woman in a hundred who
+can be trusted to hold her tongue. Is this the hotel? Good-night. Yes,
+isn't it a delicious coat? _Bonne nuit_, Amor! _À demain!_"
+
+A minute later Mrs. Shiffney tapped at Henriette's door, which was
+immediately opened.
+
+"It is all right," she whispered. "I shall have the libretto
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Two days later Mrs. Shiffney slipped Gillier's libretto surreptitiously
+into Claude's hand.
+
+"It's splendid!" she almost whispered. "With such a libretto you can't
+fail."
+
+They were in the deserted salon of the hotel, among armchairs, albums
+and old French picture-papers. Mrs. Shiffney looked toward the door.
+
+"Don't let anyone know I've read it--especially Henriette. She's a dear
+and a great friend of mine, but, all the same, she'd be horribly
+jealous. There's only one thing about the libretto that frightens me."
+
+"What is it? Do tell me!"
+
+"Having so many Easterns in it. If by any chance you should ever want to
+produce your opera--" She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon him. "In
+America, I fancy--no, I think I'm being absurd."
+
+"But what do you mean? Do tell me! Not that there's the slightest chance
+yet of my opera ever being done anywhere."
+
+"Well, it's only that Americans do so hate what they call color."
+
+"Oh, but that is only in negroes!"
+
+"Is it? Then I'm talking nonsense! I'm so glad! Not a word to Henriette!
+Hush! Here she is!"
+
+At that moment the door opened and the white face of Madame Sennier
+looked in.
+
+"What are you two doing here? Where is Max?"
+
+"Gone to arrange about the sleeping-car."
+
+Claude slipped the libretto into the pocket of his jacket. In London he
+had been rather inclined to like Madame Sennier. In Constantine he felt
+ill at ease with her. He detected the secret hostility which she
+scarcely troubled to conceal, though she covered it with an air of
+careless indifference. Now and then a corner of the covering slipped
+down, leaving a surface exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day
+at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling
+which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude
+had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit. She had rescued him from his solitude
+with Gillier--a solitude which he had endured for the sake of the opera,
+but which had been odious to him. She had warmed him by her apparent
+enthusiasm, by her sympathy. He had been obliged to acknowledge that she
+was very forgiving. He had certainly not been "nice" to her in London.
+Her simplicity in telling him she had felt his conduct, her sweetness in
+being so ready to forget it, to enter into his expectations, to wish him
+well, had fascinated him, roused his chivalry. But most of all had her
+few words by the wall after Said Hitani's music touched him, been
+instrumental in bringing him nearer to her.
+
+"She showed me a bit of her real self," he thought. "And she was not
+sorry afterward that she had shown it to me."
+
+He had made her a return for this, the return which she had wanted; but
+to Claude it seemed no return at all.
+
+"You are really going away to-night?" he said now. And there was a note
+of regret in his voice which was not missed by her.
+
+"I can't possibly leave Jacques alone any longer," said Madame Sennier.
+"And what have we to do here? We aren't getting local color for an
+opera."
+
+"No, no; of course, you want to get away!" said Claude quickly, and
+stiffening with constraint.
+
+"I should love to stay on. This place fascinates me by its strangeness,
+its marvellous position," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She looked at Claude.
+
+"But I suppose we must go back. Will you take me for a last walk before
+tea?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+Madame Sennier passed the tip of her tongue across her scarlet lips.
+
+"Over the bridge and up into the pine-wood?"
+
+"Wherever you like."
+
+At this moment Armand Gillier walked brusquely into the room. Mrs.
+Shiffney turned to Henriette.
+
+"We'll leave Monsieur Gillier to take care of you."
+
+Henriette's lips tightened. Gillier said:
+
+"_Bien_, madame!"
+
+As Mrs. Shiffney and Claude left the room Gillier bowed with very formal
+politeness. The door shut. After a pause Gillier said:
+
+"You go away to-night, madame?"
+
+Madame Sennier sat down on a settee by a round table on which lay
+several copies of _L'Illustration_, in glazed black covers, _La Dépêche
+Algérienne_, and a guide to Constantine.
+
+She had been awake most of the previous night, with jealous care
+studying the libretto Gillier had sold to Claude, which had been put
+into her hands by Mrs. Shiffney. At once she had recognized its unusual
+merit. She had in a high degree the faculty, possessed by many clever
+Frenchwomen, of detecting and appraising the value of a work of art. She
+was furious because Gillier's libretto had never been submitted to her
+husband; but she could not say all that was in her mind. She and
+Adelaide Shiffney had been frank with each other in the matter, and she
+had no intention of making any mistake because she was angry.
+
+"We haven't much time to spare. Jacques has to get on with his new
+opera."
+
+Gillier sat down on a chair with a certain cold and reluctant but
+definite politeness. His look and manner said: "I cannot, of course,
+leave this lady whom I hate."
+
+"He is a great man now. I congratulate you on his success."
+
+"Jacques was always a great man, but he didn't quite understand it."
+
+"You enlightened him, madame."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"That was very clever of you."
+
+"It wasn't stupid. But I don't happen to be a stupid woman." Her yellow
+eyes narrowed.
+
+"I know how to detect quality. And I suppose you do?"
+
+"Why, madame?"
+
+"You tried to sell libretti to my husband before he was famous."
+
+"And failed."
+
+"Yes. But now I'm glad to know you have succeeded with another man who
+is not famous yet."
+
+Gillier laid his right hand down on one of the glazed black covers of
+_L'Illustration_.
+
+"You do not believe in my talent, madame. I cannot understand why you
+should be interested in such a matter."
+
+"You make the mistake of supposing that a talented man can never be
+immature. What you offered to my husband was immature; but I always knew
+you had talent."
+
+"Indeed? You never told me so that I remember."
+
+"You appeared to be fully aware of it."
+
+Gillier made a fist of his hand on the cover. He wished Jacques Sennier
+were setting the libretto he had sold to Claude Heath, and Madame
+Sennier wished exactly the same thing. He did not know her thought; but
+she divined his. With all her soul, greedy for her Jacques and for
+herself, she coveted that libretto. She almost hated Claude Heath for
+possessing it. And now, as she sat opposite to Gillier, with the round
+table between them, always alert for intrigue, she began to wonder
+whether in truth the libretto was irrevocably lost to them.
+
+"Weren't you?" she said, fixing her unflinching eyes upon him.
+
+"I knew I was not quite such a fool as your husband certainly thought
+me."
+
+"Jacques is a mere baby outside of his art."
+
+"_Si?_"
+
+"That is why I have to think for him very often. Which of the libretti
+has Mr. Heath bought?"
+
+"It is not one of those I had the honor of showing to Monsieur Sennier."
+
+"Really? You have written another specially for Mr. Heath?"
+
+"I wrote another to please myself. His wife saw it and took it to him.
+He was so foolish as to think it good enough to buy."
+
+"Let us hope his music will be good enough to produce on the stage."
+
+Gillier looked very sharply at her, and began to tug at his moustache;
+but he said nothing. After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change
+of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more
+friendly:
+
+"When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?"
+
+"You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?"
+
+"If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with
+a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough
+character. "It has nothing to do with you. I haven't your interests at
+my heart. Why should I bother about them? All I want is to get something
+fine for my husband when a chance arises. I know what's good better than
+you do, my friend. You showed me three libretti that didn't do. Show me
+one that does do, and I'll pay you a price that will astonish you."
+
+Gillier's large eyes shone.
+
+"How much would you pay?"
+
+"Show me a fine libretto!"
+
+"Tell me how much you'd pay."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to
+prove the offer to my satisfaction."
+
+Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the _Dépêche Algérienne_,
+and began carefully to fold it into pleats.
+
+"I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.
+
+"If I were satisfied I would see that you got it."
+
+There was a long silence, during which they looked at each other.
+
+Gillier was puzzled. He did not believe Claude Heath had shown the
+libretto to her. Yet she was surely prompted now by some very definite
+purpose. He could not guess what it was. At last he looked down at the
+paper he was folding mechanically.
+
+"I haven't got anything to sell at present," he almost growled, in a
+very low voice.
+
+"That's a pity. We must hope for the future. There is no reason why you
+and I should be mortal enemies since you haven't had a chance to murder
+my poor old cabbage."
+
+"He's a coward," said Gillier.
+
+"Of course he is. And I'm very thankful for it. Cowards live long."
+
+She got up from the settee. Gillier, returning to his varnish, sprang
+up, dropping the paper, and opened the door.
+
+"Don't forget what I said," she remarked as she went out. "Five times
+the price anyone else offers, on account of a royalty to be fixed by
+mutual agreement. But it would have to be a libretto _numéro un_."
+
+He looked at her but did not say a word.
+
+When she was gone he sat down again by the round table and stared at the
+cloth, with his head bent and his muscular, large-boned arms laid one
+upon the other.
+
+And presently he swore under his breath.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney and Claude were making their way through the
+crowded and noisy street toward the unfinished Suspension Bridge which
+spans the gorge, linking the city to the height which is crowned by the
+great hospital. Beyond the hospital, opposite to the Grand Rocher, a
+terrific precipice of rock beneath which a cascade leaps down to the
+valley where lie the baths of Sidi Imcin, is a wood of fir-trees
+commanding an immense view. This was the objective of their walk. The
+sun shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage
+height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for
+destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were
+carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like
+the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men
+among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that
+stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and
+slippery pavements that wind between the mauve and the pale yellow house
+fronts, came incessant cries and the long and dull murmur of voices.
+Bellebelles were singing everywhere in their tiny cages, heedless of
+their captivity. On tiny wooden tables and stands before the insouciant
+workers at trades, and the indifferent sellers of goods, were set vases
+of pale yellow jonquils. Round the minarets fluttered the pigeons. And
+again, floating across the terrific gorge, came the brave notes of the
+military clarions.
+
+"There is something here which I have never felt in any other place,"
+said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to
+cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the
+water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city,
+is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known
+you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting
+life is!"
+
+She did not always think so, but at this moment she really found life
+interesting.
+
+"I shall never forget this little time!" she added. "I haven't enjoyed
+myself so much for years. And now it's nearly over. What a bore!"
+
+Claude felt exhilarated too. The day was so bright, so alive, seemed
+full of wildness and gaiety and lusty freedom.
+
+"Let us enjoy what is left!" he said.
+
+She stole a side glance at him as he swung along by her. How would it be
+to be married to a man like him--a man with his way to make?
+
+They came down to the bridge, escaping from the bustle of the city. From
+the fir woods the clarions sounded louder, calling to each other like
+bold and triumphant voices.
+
+"Have you got those in your opera?" she asked him.
+
+"I shall have them."
+
+"Of course."
+
+They talked a little about the libretto as they crossed the bridge, with
+the sound of the water in their ears.
+
+"It is good to be out of the city!" Claude said, as they came to the
+rubble of the unfinished track on the farther side, where Arabs worked
+under the supervision of a French overseer. "I did not know you were a
+walker."
+
+"I don't think you knew very much about me."
+
+"That's quite true. Where do you wish to go?"
+
+"Anywhere--to the left. Let us sit on a rock under the trees and look at
+the view."
+
+"Can you get up here?"
+
+"If you give me your hand."
+
+They walked a little way in the shadow of the fir-trees, leaving the
+hospital on their right. The plantation was almost deserted. The
+soldiers were evidently retiring, for the clarions sounded more distant
+now. Here and there the figure of an Arab was visible sauntering slowly
+among the trees, with the smoke of his cigarette dispersing above him.
+Some young Jews went by, holding hands, laughing and talking. They sent
+glances of hard inquiry at Mrs. Shiffney's broad figure from their too
+intelligent eyes. Soon their thin forms vanished among the gray trunks.
+
+"Shall we sit there?" asked Claude.
+
+"Yes; just in the sun."
+
+"Oh, but you wanted--"
+
+"No, let us sit in the sun."
+
+She opened her green parasol.
+
+Almost at the edge of the cliff, which descended steeply to the high
+road to Philippeville, was a flat ledge of rock warmed by the sunbeams.
+
+"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"
+
+They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale
+yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot,
+the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.
+
+"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude,
+clasping his hands round his knees.
+
+"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London
+husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
+suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"
+
+"I think I did."
+
+"Don't you ever regret that little house?"
+
+She saw his eyebrows move downward.
+
+"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."
+
+"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
+seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."
+
+"Was there?"
+
+"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
+that without ever hearing your music? I did."
+
+"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"
+
+"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
+evasiveness.
+
+Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
+view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
+too well, perhaps.
+
+"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
+But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
+particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
+unlike anyone else's."
+
+"I certainly got to love my little house."
+
+"Because it was doing things for you."
+
+Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
+As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in
+answer to his gaze.
+
+"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.
+
+"But--forgive me--how can you know?"
+
+"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
+directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I
+daresay--follow my lead."
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"I think I'd better not."
+
+"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
+
+"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
+of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
+hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
+
+"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
+blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.
+
+Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.
+
+"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.
+
+Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had
+come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.
+
+"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.
+
+He did not mean to speak coldly; but directly he had said the words he
+knew that his voice had become frigid.
+
+"What a stupid ass I am!" was his comment on himself. But how to be
+different?
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was looking very grave. Her drawn-down brows, her powerful
+lips suggested to him at this moment suffering. In London he had thought
+of her as a typical pleasure-seeking woman, greedy of sensation,
+reckless in the chase after it. And he had disliked, almost feared her,
+despite her careless charm. Now he felt differently about her. He had
+come to that point in a man's acquaintance with a woman when he says to
+himself, "I never understood her properly." He seemed to himself a
+brute. Yet what had he done?
+
+She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a
+silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to
+say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even
+to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out
+beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the
+cascades, he saw in a hollow, the clustering trees about the baths of
+Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white
+blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against
+the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoarse noise in the
+hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped
+down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where
+it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence,
+believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined,
+and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.
+
+His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops,
+beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open
+country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming
+in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes,
+dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for
+hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests
+seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or
+perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must
+exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only
+that something experienced made life truly life.
+
+For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his
+companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for
+women rather than a woman.
+
+During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires
+connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had
+come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her
+mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at
+this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different
+she might well have been on his side. Even now--
+
+Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she
+deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it
+matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as
+marriage got to do with it?
+
+Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that
+firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive
+loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.
+
+He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the
+minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of
+it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.
+All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he
+understood her desire and was recoiling from it.
+
+Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed
+every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face,
+transforming it.
+
+"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think
+you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"
+
+As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her
+tailor-made skirt.
+
+Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.
+
+"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to
+seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was
+unknown by her at this moment.
+
+"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."
+
+She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward
+the bridge.
+
+"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."
+
+Claude said nothing, and she continued:
+
+"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his
+knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his
+talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as
+inflexible as the Grand Rocher."
+
+She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.
+
+"That is why women always love and hate him."
+
+Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and
+looked at him, smiling:
+
+"I am sure Charmian knows that."
+
+Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.
+
+"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.
+
+"And, so, very few inflexible men?"
+
+"I have never--"
+
+He pulled himself up.
+
+"Yes?" she said encouragingly.
+
+"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have
+never laid claim to anything--anything in the way of talent. It isn't
+quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or
+an important person when I don't?"
+
+"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of
+talent?"
+
+"I am entirely unknown."
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, of course, but--but perhaps it is only when he has something
+to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."
+
+"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."
+
+Claude looked down.
+
+"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its
+production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be
+specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I
+have been privileged. I have read the libretto."
+
+As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian,
+of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by
+events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which
+always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered
+the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had
+guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it
+angel or demon in his life?
+
+"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."
+
+He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.
+
+They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities,
+into the perpetual uproar of the city.
+
+By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.
+Claude went down to the station to see them off.
+
+On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in
+his hand.
+
+Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.
+
+From the window of the _wagon-lit_ Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men
+standing together as the train drew away from the platform.
+
+Then she nodded and waved her hand.
+
+There was a mocking smile on her face.
+
+When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.
+
+"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to
+suspect it?"
+
+"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.
+"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the
+window."
+
+"No, don't!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."
+
+"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying
+Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."
+
+"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"
+
+The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only
+stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and
+went on board _The Wanderer_, which weighed anchor and set sail for
+Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say
+adieu to Charmian.
+
+The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney
+and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These,
+the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the
+faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved
+complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.
+
+Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days
+of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost
+vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and
+done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made
+upon the occupants and had received from them.
+
+"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die
+for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were
+his own child!"
+
+"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
+
+The visit was not without intensities.
+
+"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into
+the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just
+back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the
+way, we came across your husband in Constantine."
+
+"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.
+
+Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening
+phrase, "all news when we meet." She was burning with curiosity, was
+tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw
+the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the
+two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.
+
+"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
+Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
+there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
+with our affairs."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
+delightful time."
+
+"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
+the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"--he
+flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
+evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"
+
+He blew a kiss.
+
+"Shall I forget them? Never!"
+
+Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.
+
+"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
+spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.
+
+The composer seized his arm.
+
+"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
+the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
+come!"
+
+He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
+like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
+him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
+women were left alone.
+
+"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
+There's a little breeze from the sea."
+
+"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
+
+When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
+murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
+if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
+Constantine.
+
+"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
+extraordinary."
+
+And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
+Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
+before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
+death by their Arab husbands.
+
+"_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
+hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
+twisting fingers.
+
+"_Les Arabes sont des monstres._"
+
+As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
+interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
+
+"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
+
+She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its
+African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
+read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
+instinctive disgust.
+
+The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_"
+
+"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
+eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
+parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
+antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
+really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
+they are picturesque."
+
+"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
+call color drives them quite mad!"
+
+"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.
+
+"It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._"
+
+"Tst! Tst! Tst!"
+
+The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Tst! Tst!"
+
+They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
+and of native music.
+
+"I must go! I must hear, see!"
+
+The composer cried out.
+
+"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"
+
+There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
+from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.
+
+"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.
+
+She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.
+
+"How hot it is!"
+
+Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
+syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.
+
+"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
+the syrups. "I wonder--" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
+my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.
+
+Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
+kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
+ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
+declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
+a negative.
+
+"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
+and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
+husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."
+
+"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
+said Charmian, in a constrained voice.
+
+"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+Was she smiling behind the veil?
+
+"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what
+real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London,
+they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."
+
+"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to
+take us there, no reason to go."
+
+She laughed and added:
+
+"And Claude and I are not millionaires."
+
+Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of
+living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:
+
+"But some day you will surely go."
+
+"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.
+
+"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house
+one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and
+pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find
+some occupation.
+
+"Yes, I believe I do--a man with a tiny beard."
+
+"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the
+world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so,
+Henriette?"
+
+"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find
+one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals.
+And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I
+told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for
+him. He doesn't know where to look."
+
+"But surely--" began Charmian.
+
+"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.
+
+Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's
+eyes, through her veil.
+
+"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.
+
+"Well, really--Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.
+
+"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When
+art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know
+your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees
+that--well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the
+Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the
+fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and
+playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.
+_Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!_ One has only to look at your
+interesting husband, to see him in the African _milieu_, to see that.
+And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A
+pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I
+starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is
+not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one
+form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis, that is where
+the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders
+went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted
+for the last time! Here are your syrups."
+
+Jacques Sennier came, almost running.
+
+"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a
+moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some
+wild joke of the composer's.
+
+"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating
+all your biscuits now."
+
+When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He
+insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande
+Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and
+warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed
+one on the top of the other, in both his own.
+
+"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed.
+"To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person,
+have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not
+more truthful than I."
+
+His eyes twinkled.
+
+"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But
+to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water
+bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your
+respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"
+
+"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian
+grasp.
+
+"He accepted a libretto!"
+
+When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of
+profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed
+to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed
+for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the
+woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy
+and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense
+vitality went away with them all. So long as they were with her the
+little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of
+things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled
+Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in
+both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and
+temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And
+they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the
+great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone--who counted--knew
+who they were.
+
+As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the
+associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions
+were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only
+knew it now that he was gone.
+
+Madame Sennier had frightened her.
+
+"_Mais, ma chère, ce n'est pas sérieux!_"
+
+The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as
+if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth
+known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One
+has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the African
+_milieu_, to see that!"
+
+What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?
+
+Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole
+matter, that she telegraphed:
+
+     "Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull
+     here.--CHARMIAN."
+
+She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her rôle;
+but her nerves drove her into the weakness.
+
+Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.
+
+Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men
+together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On
+the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He
+seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.
+
+"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen
+interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."
+
+Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she
+thought. Then he said formally:
+
+"I am delighted to stay, madame."
+
+During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to
+become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in
+hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could
+not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was
+talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.
+
+The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually
+unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his
+voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.
+Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her
+with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.
+
+Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and
+Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.
+Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his
+Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana
+cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.
+His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably
+expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his
+remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay
+that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.
+
+"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful
+carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my
+husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him
+with his music?"
+
+"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."
+
+Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and
+looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.
+
+"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.
+
+Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.
+
+"Who knows, madame?"
+
+"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"
+
+"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to
+have certain doubts."
+
+"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I
+don't quite understand."
+
+"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much
+knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an
+original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."
+
+"Then--"
+
+"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the
+public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I
+will never get on together."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel
+anxious."
+
+"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"
+
+"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of
+it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally,
+but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am
+not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
+I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not
+intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"
+
+"Of course not--with your talent!"
+
+"Ah, that is just it!"
+
+His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
+speaking almost with violence.
+
+"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
+that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
+it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
+will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
+go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his glass of
+brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great
+effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage
+as great as mine? I doubt it."
+
+"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
+to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
+not a note of it."
+
+"No. And that enables me--"
+
+"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
+Gillier?"
+
+"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"
+
+"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
+thinking of?"
+
+"I feared by your words, your manner--"
+
+"I assure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
+what you were saying."
+
+"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
+husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal
+offense--pronouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.
+The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
+in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
+
+"Yes?" said Charmian.
+
+"Madame?"
+
+"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
+us."
+
+"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
+success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
+Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame,
+believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
+associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
+different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
+has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
+lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
+understand something of the life not merely in, but that
+underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I
+say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is only the difference between the French and English
+temperaments."
+
+"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who
+is not afraid to live."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a
+matter which I can discuss with you."
+
+"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"--he looked
+down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I
+am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I
+sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit
+your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose
+a hundred pounds rather than to--"
+
+"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.
+
+She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to
+speak quietly.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"You have asked me a question--"
+
+"I have asked no question, madame!"
+
+"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the
+libretto?"
+
+Gillier was silent.
+
+"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to
+keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer
+would be the same."
+
+She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger,
+a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense
+bitterness:
+
+"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our
+friends, our occupations, everything--our life in England"--her voice
+trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and
+you come, you dare to come to us, and ask--ask--"
+
+Gillier got up.
+
+"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to
+keep it--"
+
+"We do choose to keep it."
+
+"Then I can do nothing."
+
+He pulled out his watch.
+
+"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindly say good-night
+for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."
+
+He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it
+seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its
+own to resist hers.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space
+of the court and disappear.
+
+After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat
+down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing
+in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that
+she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted
+by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the
+rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will
+be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of
+myself."
+
+But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden
+entrance, and called out:
+
+"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"
+
+Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.
+
+"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.
+
+"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."
+
+"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.
+
+Charmian retreated to the house.
+
+As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely
+ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude.
+Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her
+quiet, agreeable voice:
+
+"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall
+read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I
+daresay you are tired."
+
+She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that
+instant Charmian felt much calmer.
+
+"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to
+you for him."
+
+Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly
+away.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter,
+Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"
+
+"Let us go upstairs," she answered.
+
+Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it
+natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.
+
+"All right," he answered.
+
+"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in
+the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story
+of the house.
+
+Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she
+wrote her letters and did accounts.
+
+"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into
+this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
+
+"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How
+could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"
+
+As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the
+embrasure of the small grated window.
+
+"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to
+Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"
+
+"But you must have shown it!"
+
+"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."
+
+"She has read it."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"I am positive she has read it."
+
+"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."
+
+Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:
+
+"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"
+
+"I didn't say that."
+
+"Ah! You--you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"
+
+Her voice rose as she said the last words.
+
+"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I
+have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.
+
+"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"
+
+"Certainly I did!"
+
+"And then--then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read
+it!"
+
+There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.
+
+"She had not read my copy."
+
+"I say she has!"
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."
+
+"To her--to Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh--you--oh, that men should claim to have
+keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"
+
+She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before
+her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the
+handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her
+body shook.
+
+"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"
+
+She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her
+handkerchief on the floor.
+
+"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well,
+then!"
+
+She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly
+with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her
+shoulders were slightly raised, she said:
+
+"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked
+me if we would give up his libretto."
+
+"Give up the libretto?"
+
+"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very
+poor. Do you put the two things together?"
+
+"You think he fancies--"
+
+"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques
+Sennier. Those two--Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier--went to
+Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."
+
+"Absurd!"
+
+"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the
+libretto?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in
+what you were doing?"
+
+Claude flushed.
+
+"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets
+nobody else knew? And didn't she--didn't she--"
+
+But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to
+say--"make love to you."
+
+"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are
+trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up
+everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house,
+everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now?
+Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who
+comes along--"
+
+Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a
+storm of jealousy swept through her heart.
+
+"That's not true or fair--what you imply!" said Claude. "I never--Mrs.
+Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me--nothing!"
+
+"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to
+Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Did Gillier ever say so?"
+
+"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he
+should--to a woman!"
+
+The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his
+will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe
+that he had been tricked.
+
+"We have no proof," he said.
+
+Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was
+struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.
+
+"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.
+
+Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedly to go by
+Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the
+arm.
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+She tried to get away. But he held her.
+
+"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great
+fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's
+no great harm done. The libretto is mine--ours, ours. And we're not
+going to give it up. I'll try--I'll try to put my heart into the music,
+to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for
+all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail--"
+
+She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp,
+and hurried away.
+
+A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she
+pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.
+
+He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still,
+facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its
+further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated
+window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women
+had looked as they sat idly on the divan.
+
+He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And,
+leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a
+long, long time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+More than a year had passed away. April held sway over Algeria.
+
+In the white Arab house on the hill Claude and Charmian still lived and
+Claude still worked. To escape the great heat of the previous summer
+they had gone to England for a time, but early October had found them
+once more at Djenan-el-Maqui, and since then they had not stirred.
+
+Their visit to London had been a strange experience for Charmian.
+
+They had arrived in town at the beginning of July, and had stayed with
+Mrs. Mansfield in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Mansfield had not paid her
+proposed visit to Algiers. She had written that she was growing old and
+lazy, and dreaded a sea voyage. But she had received them with a warmth
+of affection which had earned their immediate forgiveness. There was
+still a month of "season" to run, and Charmian went about and saw her
+old friends. But Claude refused to go out, and returned at once to
+orchestral studies with his "coach." He even remained in London during
+the whole of August and September, while Charmian paid some visits, and
+went to the sea with her mother. Thus they had been separated for a time
+after their long sojourn together in the closest intimacy.
+
+Charmian found that she missed Claude very much. One day she said to her
+mother, with pretended lightness and smiling:
+
+"Madre, I've got such a habit of Claude and Claude's work that I seem to
+be in half when I'm not with him."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield wondered whether her son-in-law felt in half when he was
+by himself in London.
+
+To Charmian, coming back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had
+sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the
+first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had
+often longed to have a party in the evening to look forward to. In
+England she realized that not only had she got a habit of Claude, but
+that she had got a habit, or almost a habit, of Africa and a quiet life
+in the sunshine under blue skies. If the opera were finished, the need
+for living in Mustapha removed, would she be glad not to return to
+Djenan-el-Maqui? The mere thought of never seeing the little white house
+with its cupolas and its flat roof again sent a sharp pang through her.
+Pierre, with his arched eyebrows and upraised, upturned palm, "La Grande
+Jeanne," Bibi, little Fatma, they had become almost a dear part of her
+life.
+
+But soon she fell into old ways of thought and of action, though she was
+never, she believed, quite the same Charmian as before. She longed, as
+of old, but even more strongly, to conquer the set, and this world of
+pleasure-seekers and connoisseurs. But she looked upon them from the
+outside, whereas before she had been inside. During her long absence she
+had certainly "dropped out" a little. She realized the root indifference
+of most people to those who are not perpetually before them, making a
+claim to friendship. When she reappeared in London many whom she had
+hitherto looked upon as friends greeted her with a casual, "Oh, are you
+back after all? We thought you had quite forsaken us!" And it was
+impossible for even Charmian to suppose that such a forsaking would have
+been felt as a great affliction.
+
+This recognition on her part of the small place she had held, even as
+merely a charming girl, in this society, made Charmian think of
+Djenan-el-Maqui with a stronger affection, but also made her long in a
+new, and more ruthless way, to triumph in London, as clever wives of
+great celebrities triumph. She saw Madame Sennier several times, as
+usual surrounded and fêted. And Madame Sennier, though she nodded and
+said a few words, scarcely seemed to remember who Charmian was. Only
+once did Charmian see a peculiarly keen expression in the yellow eyes as
+they looked at her. That was when some mention was made of a project of
+Crayford's, his intention to build a big opera house in London. Madame
+Sennier had shrugged her shoulders. But as she answered, "What would be
+the use? The Metropolitan has nearly killed him. Covent Garden, with
+its subscription, would simply finish him off. He has moved Heaven and
+earth to get Jacques' new opera either for America or England, but of
+course we laughed at him. He may pretend as much as he likes, but he's
+got nothing up his sleeve"--the yellow eyes had fixed themselves upon
+Charmian with an intent look that was almost like a look of inquiry.
+
+To Sennier she had only spoken twice. The first time he had forgotten
+who she was. The second time he had exclaimed, "Ah, the syrups! the
+greengage! and the moonlight among the passion-flowers!" and had greeted
+her with effusion.
+
+But he had never come to call on her.
+
+She still felt a sort of fondness for him; but she understood that he
+was like a child who needed perpetual petting and did not care very much
+from whom it came.
+
+The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long
+absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how
+much of a nobody she was in it.
+
+She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much
+more to conquer it and to dominate it.
+
+On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the
+heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill,
+when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices
+of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the
+three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed
+by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at
+her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing
+in London.
+
+From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha
+after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost
+as a living thing--a thing for which she had fought, from which she had
+beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers.
+They had no other child. She did not regret that.
+
+Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The
+paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was
+inclined to believe that by constant effort he had strengthened his
+will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And
+the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him
+without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was
+gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in
+the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of
+them.
+
+The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with
+Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had
+brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of
+calm even in the conquered.
+
+Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at
+the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By
+degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to
+do.
+
+He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers
+were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked
+things over."
+
+Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by
+Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a note from Saint
+Eugene. Gillier was once more in Algeria. He had never given them a sign
+of life since he had tried to buy back his libretto from them. Now he
+wrote formally, saying he was paying a short visit to his family, and
+asking permission to call at Djenan-el-Maqui at any hour that would suit
+them. His note was addressed to Claude, who at once showed it to
+Charmian.
+
+"Of course we must let him come," Claude said.
+
+"Of course!"
+
+She turned the note over, twisted it in her fingers.
+
+"How I hate him!" she said. "I can't help it. His insult to you and--"
+
+"Don't let us go into all that again. It is so long ago."
+
+"This letter brings it all back."
+
+She made a grimace of disgust.
+
+"Why should you see him?" said Claude. "Let me see him alone. You can
+easily have an engagement. You are going to those theatricals at the
+Hotel Continental on Friday. Let me have him here then."
+
+"Shall I?" She glanced at Claude. "No, I'd better be here too."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know--but I'd better! Tell him to come on Thursday."
+
+"Lunch?"
+
+"Oh, no! Let us just have him in the afternoon."
+
+Gillier came at the time appointed, and was received by Charmian, who
+made a creditable effort to behave as if she were at her ease and glad
+to see him. She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the
+drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude
+would come in a moment.
+
+In the morning of that day she had persuaded Claude to let her have a
+quarter of an hour alone with Gillier. He had asked her why she wanted
+to be alone with a man she disliked. She had replied, "After
+Constantine, don't you think you had better leave the practical part of
+it to me?" Claude had reddened slightly, but he had only said, "Very
+well. But I don't quite see what you mean. We have no reason to suppose
+Gillier has a special purpose in coming."
+
+"No, but I should like that quarter of an hour."
+
+So now she and Gillier sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she
+asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff
+formality which had in it something military.
+
+Directly Charmian had looked at Gillier she had realized that he had a
+definite purpose in coming. She was on the defensive, but she tried not
+to show it. Presently she said:
+
+"Have you been working--writing?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Another libretto?"
+
+"Madame," Gillier said, with a sort of icy fierceness, "I cannot believe
+that you are good enough to be genuinely interested in my unsuccessful
+life."
+
+After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to
+Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto
+destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble,
+and had not spared time. At last the work had been completed, typed,
+and submitted to Madame Sennier. After a week of anxious waiting Gillier
+had received the libretto with the following note:
+
+    "DEAR GILLIER,--This might do very well for some unknown
+    genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques.
+    Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us
+    a fine libretto, _such as I know you can write_, and we will pay you
+    five times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We
+    should not mind even if _someone else_ had already tried to set it.
+    All we care about is to get your _best work_.
+                                              HENRIETTE SENNIER."
+
+Gillier had torn this note up with fury. Then he had thought things over
+and paid Madame Sennier a visit. It was this visit which had prompted
+his return to Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"But I hope it won't be unsuccessful much longer," Charmian said, with
+deliberate graciousness.
+
+"I hope so too, madame."
+
+Something in his voice, a new tone, almost startled her. But she
+continued, without any change of manner:
+
+"We must all hope for a great success."
+
+"We, madame?"
+
+"You and I and my husband."
+
+Gillier bit his moustache and looked down. A heavy gloom seemed to have
+overspread him. After a moment he looked up, leaned back, as if
+determined to be at his ease, and said abruptly:
+
+"Monsieur Sennier has completed a new opera. It is to be produced at the
+Metropolitan Opera House in New York some time next winter."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+Charmian tried to keep all expression out of her voice as she spoke.
+
+"Since I last saw you, madame," Gillier continued, "I have managed to
+get a look at the libretto."
+
+Without knowing that she did so Charmian leaned forward quickly and
+moved her hands.
+
+"It does not approach my work, the work your husband bought from me for
+only one hundred pounds, in strength and drama."
+
+"Your libretto is splendid. Mr. Lake and I have always thought so; and
+of course my husband agrees with us. But you know that."
+
+Gillier pulled his thick moustache, looked quickly round the room, then
+at his hands, which he had abruptly brought down on his knees, and then
+at Charmian.
+
+"I have reason to believe that Jacques Sennier--or rather Madame
+Sennier, for she read all the libretti sent in to him, and only showed
+him those she thought worth considering--that if Madame Sennier had seen
+the libretto I sold to your husband Sennier would have set
+mine--mine--in preference to the one he has set."
+
+"Indeed!" said Charmian, with studied indifference.
+
+"Yes!" he exclaimed, almost with violence.
+
+"All this is very interesting. But I don't see what it has to do with me
+and my husband. You were good enough to offer to buy back your libretto
+from us last year. We refused. Our refusal--"
+
+"Your refusal, madame! I never spoke about the matter to your husband. I
+never asked him."
+
+"Have you come here now to ask him? Is that what you mean, monsieur?"
+
+Gillier got up, throwing his cigarette end into the brass coffee tray.
+He was evidently much excited. As he stood up in front of her Charmian
+thought that he looked suddenly more common, coarser. He thrust his
+hands into the pockets of his black trousers.
+
+"I must understand the position," he began.
+
+"It is perfectly clear. Forgive me, monsieur, but I must say I think it
+rather bad taste on your part to return to a subject which has been
+finally disposed of and which is very disagreeable to me."
+
+"Madame, I am here to say to you that I cannot consider it as finally
+disposed of till I have discussed it with Monsieur Heath. I came here
+prepared to make a proposition."
+
+"It is useless."
+
+"Madame, I trust that your husband is not endeavoring to avoid me."
+
+Charmian got up and sharply clapped her hands. The Arab boy, Bibi,
+appeared.
+
+"Bibi, ask monsieur to come," she said to him in French.
+
+"_Bieng, madame_," replied Bibi, who turned and walked softly away.
+
+During the two or three minutes which elapsed before Claude came in
+Charmian and Gillier said nothing. Gillier, who, under the influence of
+excitement, was losing his veneer of good manners, moved about the room
+pretending to examine the few bibelots it contained. His face was
+flushed. He still kept his hands in his pockets. Charmian sat still in
+her corner, watching him. She was too angry to speak. And what was there
+to be said now? Although she had a good deal of will she was clever
+enough to realize when its exercise would be useless. She knew that she
+could do nothing more with this man. Otherwise she would not have sent
+for Claude.
+
+"_V'là, Mousou!_"
+
+Bibi had returned and gently pointed to his master, smiling.
+
+"_Bon jour_, Gillier!" said Claude, as the Frenchman swung round
+sharply.
+
+"_Bon jour!_"
+
+They shook hands. Claude looked from Gillier to his wife.
+
+"You were smoking?" he said, glancing at the tray. "Won't you have
+another cigarette?"
+
+"_Merci!_"
+
+"Anyhow, I will."
+
+He picked up the cigarette box.
+
+"We haven't seen you for a long while." He lit a cigarette. "Aren't you
+going to sit down?"
+
+After a pause Gillier sat down. His eyes were fixed on Claude.
+
+"I am glad you have come," he said. "Madame does not quite understand--"
+
+"I understand perfectly, Monsieur Gillier," Charmian interrupted. "Pray
+don't endow me with a stupidity which I don't possess."
+
+"I prefer at any rate to explain the reason of my visit to Monsieur
+Heath, madame."
+
+"Have you come with a special object then?" said Claude.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By all means tell me what it is."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" said Gillier. "What is the good of a cloud of words
+between two men? I want to buy back the libretto I sold to you more than
+a year ago."
+
+Charmian gazed at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive
+face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought
+it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied:
+
+"Do you? Why?"
+
+"Why? Because I don't think you and I are suited to work together. I
+don't think we could ever make a satisfactory combination in art. This
+has been my opinion ever since I was with you at Constantine."
+
+"More than a year ago. And you only come here and say so now!"
+
+Gillier was silent and fidgeted on the divan.
+
+"Surely you must have some other reason?" said Claude in a very quiet,
+almost unnaturally quiet voice.
+
+"That is one reason, and an excellent one. Another is, however, that if
+you will consent to sell me back my libretto I believe I could get it
+taken up by a man, a composer, who is more in sympathy with me and my
+artistic aims than you could ever be."
+
+"I see. And what about all the months of work I have put in? What about
+all the music I have composed? Are you here to ask me to throw it away,
+or what?"
+
+Gillier was silent.
+
+"Surely your proposition isn't a serious one?" said Claude, still
+speaking with complete self-control.
+
+"But I say it is! I say"--Gillier raised his voice--"that it is serious.
+I am a poor man, and I am sick of waiting for success. I sold my
+libretto to you in a hurry, not knowing what I was doing. Now I have a
+chance, a great chance, of being associated with someone who is already
+famous, who would make the success of my libretto a certainty--"
+
+"A chance, when your libretto is my property!" interrupted Claude.
+
+"Oh, I know as well as you do that it's a hard thing to ask you to throw
+away all these months of labor! I don't think I could have done it,
+though in this world every man, every artist especially, must think of
+himself, if it wasn't for one thing."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+"Your heart isn't in the work!" said Gillier defiantly, but with a
+curious air of conviction--the conviction of an acute man who had made a
+discovery which could not be contested or gainsaid.
+
+"That's not true, Monsieur Gillier!" said Charmian, with hot energy.
+
+Claude said nothing, and Gillier continued, raising his voice:
+
+"It is true. Your talent and mine are not fitted to be joined together,
+and you are artist enough to know it as well as I do. I haven't heard
+your music; but I can tell. I may be poor, I may be unknown--that
+doesn't matter! I've got the instinct that doesn't lie, can't lie. If I
+had known you as I do now, before I had sold my libretto, you never
+should have had it, even if you had offered me five hundred pounds
+instead of a hundred, and nobody else would have looked at it. With your
+temperament, with your way of thinking, you'll never make a success of
+it--never! I tell you that--I who am speaking to you!"
+
+The veins in his temples swelled, and he frowned.
+
+"Give me back my libretto and take back your money! Let me have my
+chance of success. Madame--she is hard! She cares nothing! But--"
+
+"Monsieur, I must ask you to leave my wife's name out," said Claude.
+
+And for the first time since he had come into the room he spoke with
+stern determination.
+
+He had become very pale, and now looked strangely moved.
+
+"I won't have her name brought in," he added. "This is my affair."
+
+"Very well! Will you let me buy back my libretto?"
+
+Charmian expected an instant stern refusal from her husband. But after
+Gillier's question there was a prolonged pause. She wanted to break it,
+to answer fiercely for Claude; but she did not dare to. For a moment
+something in her husband's look and manner dominated her. For a moment
+she was in subjection. She sat still staring at Claude, waiting for him
+to speak. He sat looking down, and it seemed to her as if he were
+wrestling as Jacob wrestled with the angel. His white forehead drew her
+eyes. She was filled with fear; but when he looked up at her the fear
+grew. She felt almost sick--sick with apprehension.
+
+"Claude!" she said. "Oh, Claude!"
+
+It seemed that his eyes had put a great question to her, and now her
+voice had answered it.
+
+Claude turned to Armand Gillier.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you can't have your libretto back. It's mine, and
+I'm going to keep it."
+
+When Gillier was gone Charmian said, almost in a faltering voice, and
+with none of her usual self-possession of manner:
+
+"How--how could you bear that man's insults as you did?"
+
+"His insults?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Claude looked at her in silence. And again she was conscious of fear.
+
+"Don't let us ever speak of this again," he answered at last.
+
+He went away.
+
+That day he was in his workroom till very late. He did not come to tea.
+The evening fell; but he was not working on the opera. Charmian heard
+him playing Bach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the end of April Alston Lake came once more to visit them.
+
+Since those London days when they had first met him Lake had made great
+progress toward the fulfilment of his ambition. His energy and will were
+beginning to reap a good reward. He was making money, enough money to
+live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford,
+had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera.
+When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an
+infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a
+light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and
+sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that was boyish still
+pleasantly lingered with him. In him, too, there was something
+courageous that inspired courage in others.
+
+This time he announced he could stay for a month if they did not mind.
+He wanted a thorough rest before the many concerts he was going to sing
+at during the London season. Both Charmian and Claude were delighted.
+When Claude heard of it he was silent for a moment. Then he began to
+reckon.
+
+"The thirtieth to-day, isn't it? By a month do you mean a month or four
+weeks?"
+
+"Well, four weeks, old chap!"
+
+"That is less than a month."
+
+"I wish it weren't. But I have to sing in London at the Bechstein Hall
+early in June. So I'm running it pretty close as it is."
+
+"May the twenty-eighth you go, then," said Claude.
+
+"That's it. But why these higher mathematics?"
+
+Claude only smiled and went out of the room.
+
+"What is he up to, Mrs. Charmian?" asked Lake mystified.
+
+"I don't know," she answered.
+
+"Does he want to get rid of me? Is that why he was so keen to know
+whether it was four weeks or a month?" said Lake, laughing.
+
+"I am afraid that probably is it. But come up and see the flowers I've
+put in your room."
+
+"This is a little Paradise," said Lake, in his ringing baritone voice.
+"Sometimes this winter in Paris, when I was all in, don't you know--"
+
+"All in?"
+
+"Blues."
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"I'd think of Djenan-el-Maqui, and wish I was a composer instead of a
+singer--for a fifth of a minute."
+
+"Oh!" she said reproachfully. "Only a fifth!"
+
+"I know. It wasn't long. But you see I'm born to sing, so I'm bound to
+love it more than anything else. Making a noise--oh, it's rare!"
+
+He opened his mouth and ran up a scale to the high A.
+
+"I can get there pretty well now, don't you think?"
+
+"Splendid! Your voice gets bigger and bigger!" she said, with real
+enthusiasm. "But it's almost--"
+
+He stopped her.
+
+"I know what you're going to say; but I shall always be a baritone. If
+you knew as much as I do about baritones turned into tenors, you'd say,
+'Leave it alone, my boy!' and that's what I'm going to do. Now what
+about these flowers? It is good to be here."
+
+Claude did not join Alston Lake in making holiday. Indeed, Charmian
+noticed that he was working much harder than usual, as if Lake's coming
+had been an incentive to him.
+
+"I don't apologize to you, Alston," he said.
+
+"Odd if you did when I was the first to try and set you on to an opera.
+Besides, you can't get ahead too fast now. There's--"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Crayford'll be over this summer," he remarked, giving a casual tone to
+his voice.
+
+"Ah!" said Claude.
+
+And the conversation dropped.
+
+Only in the early morning, and for an hour, or an hour and a half after
+lunch, did Claude intermit his labors. In the morning the three of them
+rode, on good horses hired from the Vitoz stables. After lunch they sat
+in the little court of the fountain, smoked and talked. Conversation
+never flagged when Alston was there. His young energy bred a desire for
+expression in those about him. And Charmian and Claude were now his most
+intimate friends. He identified himself with them in a charming way, was
+devoted to their fortunes, and assumed, without a trace of conceit,
+their devotion to his. When Claude, about three o'clock, got up and went
+away to his workroom Alston often went off for a stroll alone. Between
+tea and dinner time, if Charmian had no engagement, she and Alston
+walked together in the scented Bois de Boulogne, past "Tananarivo," or
+drove down to the Jardin d'Essai, and spent an hour there near the
+shimmering sea.
+
+In these many intimate hours Charmian learnt to appreciate the chivalry
+and delicacy peculiar to well-bred American men in their relations with
+women. Although she and Alston were both young, and she was an
+attractive woman, she felt as safe with him as if he were her brother.
+His life in Paris had left him entirely unspoiled, had even left him in
+possession of the characteristic and open-hearted naïveté which was one
+of his chief attractions, though he was quite unaware of it. She was
+very happy with Alston. But often she thought of Claude, far away on the
+hill, shut in, resigning all this freedom, this delicious open-air life,
+which she was enjoying with his friend.
+
+"He's working almost too hard," she said one day when they were sitting
+in the Jardin d'Essai, "and he will work at night now. He never used to
+do that. Don't you think he's beginning to look rather white and worn
+out?"
+
+She spoke with some anxiety.
+
+"Sometimes he does look a bit tired," Alston allowed. "But a man's bound
+to when he puts his back into a thing. And there's not much doubt as to
+whether old Claude's back is in the opera. I say, Mrs. Charmian, how far
+has he got exactly?"
+
+"Practically the whole of the music is composed, I believe. It's the
+orchestration that takes such a lot of time."
+
+"Well, and how far has that got? Claude's never told me plump out.
+Composers never do. And I know better than to pump them. It's
+fatal--that! They simply can't stand it."
+
+"I know. I believe the opera might be ready by the end of this year."
+
+"Not before then?"
+
+They looked at each other, then Charmian said:
+
+"Oh, Alston, if you only knew how difficult it is to me to wait--to wait
+and not to show any impatience to him. Sometimes--well, now and then,
+I've shut myself in and cried with impatience, cried angrily. I've
+wanted to bite things. One day I actually did bite a pillow."
+
+She laughed, but her cheeks were flushed.
+
+"It's the perpetual keeping it in that is such a torment. I know how
+wicked it would be to hurry him. And he does work so hard. And I've
+heard of people taking ten years over an opera. Claude only began about
+a year and five months ago. He's been marvellously quick, really. But,
+oh, sometimes I feel as if this suppressed impatience were making me
+ill, physically and mentally, as if it were a kind of poison stealing
+all through me! Can you understand?"
+
+"Can I? You bet! I only wish the thing could be ready before Crayford
+goes back to the States."
+
+"When does he go?"
+
+"Some time in September, I believe. He goes on the Continent after July.
+Of course, July he's in London, June too. Then he has his cure at
+Divonne. If only---- When do you come to London?"
+
+Charmian suddenly grasped his arm.
+
+"Alston, I'll keep him here, give up London, anything to have the opera
+finished by the end of August!"
+
+"Well, but the heat!"
+
+"I don't believe it's too hot upon the hill where we are, with all those
+trees. Every afternoon I expect there's a breeze from the sea. I know we
+could stand it. It's only April now. That would mean four solid months
+of steady work. But then?"
+
+"I'd bring Crayford over."
+
+"Would he come?"
+
+"I'd make him."
+
+"But we might--"
+
+"No, Mrs. Charmian. He ought to hear it in Mustapha. I know him. He's a
+hard business man. But he's awfully susceptible too. And then he's great
+on scenic effects. Now, he's never been in Africa. Think of the glamour
+of it, especially in summer, when the real Africa emerges, by Gee, in
+all its blue and fire! We'd plunge him in it, you and I. That Casbah
+scene--you know, the third act! I'd take him there by moonlight on a
+September night--full moon--show him the women on their terraces and in
+their courts, the town dropping down to the silver below, while the
+native music--by Gee! We'd dazzle him, we'd spread the magic carpet for
+him, we'd carry him away till he couldn't say no, till he'd be as mad on
+the thing as we are!"
+
+"Oh, Alston, if we could!"
+
+She had caught all his enthusiasm. It seemed to her that in North Africa
+Mr. Crayford could not refuse the opera. From that moment she had made
+up her mind. No London season! Whatever happened, she and Claude were
+going to remain at Djenan-el-Maqui till the opera was finished, finished
+to the last detail. That very evening she spoke about it to Claude.
+
+"Claudie," she said. "Are you very keen on going to London this year?"
+
+He looked at her as if almost startled.
+
+"I? But, surely--do you mean that you don't want to go?"
+
+She moved her head.
+
+"Not one little bit."
+
+"Well, but then where do you wish to go?"
+
+"Where? Why should we go anywhere?"
+
+"Stay here?"
+
+"I've come to love this little house, the garden, even those absurd
+goldfish that are always looking for nothing."
+
+"Well, but the heat!"
+
+His voice did not sound reluctant or protesting, only a little doubtful
+and surprised.
+
+"Lots of people stay. Algiers doesn't empty of human beings, only of
+travellers, because it's summer. And we are up on a height."
+
+"That's true. And I could work on quietly."
+
+"Absolutely undisturbed."
+
+"The only thing is I meant to see Jernington."
+
+Jernington was the professor with whom Claude studied orchestration in
+London.
+
+"Get him over here."
+
+"Jernington! Why, he never leaves London!"
+
+"Get him to for a month. We'll pay all his expenses and everything, of
+course."
+
+"How you go ahead!" he said, laughing. "You must be a twin of Alston's,
+I think."
+
+"What has got to be done can be done."
+
+"Well, but the expense; you know, Charmian, we live right up to our
+income."
+
+"Hang the expense! Oh, as Alston would say!"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You really are a marvellous wife!"
+
+"Am I? Am I?"
+
+"I might sound old Jernington. He'll think I'm raving mad, but still--"
+
+"I only hope," she said, smiling and eager, "that he won't be so raving
+sane as to refuse."
+
+"But what will Madre think, not seeing you--us, I mean?"
+
+Charmian looked grave.
+
+"Yes, I know. But Madre has never come to see us here."
+
+"Oh, Charmian, there could never be a cloud between Madre and us!"
+
+"No, no, never! Still, why has she never come?"
+
+"She really hates the sea. You know she has never in her life done more
+than cross the Channel."
+
+"Do you think that is the reason why she has never come?"
+
+"How can I know?"
+
+"Claude, Madre is strange sometimes. Don't you think so?"
+
+"Strange? She is absolutely herself. She does not take anyone else's
+color, if that is what you mean. I love that in her."
+
+"So do I. Still, I think she is strange."
+
+At this moment Alston came in and the conversation dropped. But both
+husband and wife thought many times of "Madre" that day, and not without
+a certain uneasiness. Was the heart of the mother with them in their
+enterprise?
+
+Charmian put that question to herself. But Claude did not put it. He
+thought of Mrs. Mansfield's intense and fiery eyes. They saw far, saw
+deep. He loved them, the look in them. But he must try to forget them.
+He must give himself to the enthusiasm of his wife and of Alston Lake.
+
+He sent a long telegram to Jernington, saying how difficult it was for
+him to leave Mustapha, and begging Jernington to come over during the
+summer so that they might work together in quiet. All expenses were to
+be paid. Next day he received a telegram from Jernington: "Very
+difficult is it absolutely impossible for you to come to England?"
+
+"I'll answer that," said Charmian.
+
+She telegraphed, "Absolutely impossible--HEATH."
+
+In the late evening a second telegram came from Jernington: "Very well
+suppose I must come--JERNINGTON."
+
+Charmian laughed as she read it over Claude's shoulder.
+
+"The pathos of it," she said. "Poor old Jernington! He is
+horror-stricken. Bury St. Edmunds has been his farthest beat till now
+except for his year in Germany. Claudie, he loves the opera or he would
+never have consented to come. I felt it was a test. The opera, the
+child, has stood it triumphantly. I love old Jernington. And he is a
+first-rate critic, isn't he?"
+
+"Of orchestration, certainly."
+
+"That's half the battle in an opera. I feel so happy. Let us have an
+audition to-night!"
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+"And play us an act right through; the first act. Alston has only heard
+it in bits."
+
+"I don't really care for anyone to hear it yet," Claude said, with
+obvious reluctance.
+
+Yet he desired a verdict--of praise. He longed for encouragement. In old
+days, when he had composed for himself, he had felt indifferent to that.
+But now he was working on something which was planned, which was being
+executed, with the intention to strike upon the imagination of a big
+public. He was no longer indifferent. He was secretly anxious. He longed
+to be told that what he was doing was good.
+
+That evening he was genuinely warmed by the enthusiasm of his wife and
+of Alston.
+
+"And surely," he said to himself, "they would be inclined to be more
+critical than others, to be hypercritical."
+
+He forgot that in some natures desire creates conviction.
+
+On the last day of Alston's visit Charmian and he understood why
+Claude's mathematical powers had been brought to bear on the question of
+its exact duration. Claude himself explained with rather a rueful face.
+
+"I hoped--I thought if you were going to stay for the extra days I might
+possibly have the finale of the opera finished. Even when you told me
+your month meant four weeks I thought I would have a tremendous try to
+complete it. Well, I have had a tremendous try. But I've failed. I must
+have two more weeks, I believe, before I conquer the monster."
+
+He was looking very pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and moved his
+hands nervously while he was speaking.
+
+"That was it!" exclaimed Alston.
+
+"Yes, that was it."
+
+Charmian and Alston exchanged a quick glance.
+
+"When you've done the finale," Alston said, with the firmness of one who
+spoke with permission, even perhaps by special request, "will the opera
+be practically finished?"
+
+"Finished? Good Heavens, no!"
+
+"Well, but if it's the finale of the whole opera?" said Charmian.
+
+"I've got bits here and there to do, and a lot to re-do."
+
+Again Charmian and the American exchanged glances.
+
+"I say, old chap," said Alston. "You read Balzac, don't you?"
+
+"Of course. But what has that to do with the opera?"
+
+"Did you ever read that story of his about a painter who was always
+striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for
+ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One
+day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they
+found a mere mess of paint representing nothing."
+
+"Well?" said Claude, rather stiffly.
+
+"You've got a splendid talent. I hope you're going to trust it."
+
+Claude said nothing, and Alston, in his easy, almost boyish way, glanced
+off to some other topic. But before he started for England he said to
+Charmian:
+
+"Do watch him a bit if you can, Mrs. Charmian, for over-elaboration.
+Don't let him work it to death, I mean, till all the spontaneity is
+gone. I believe that's a danger with him. Somehow I think he lacks
+complete confidence in himself."
+
+"You see it's the first time he has ever tried to do an opera."
+
+"I know. It's natural enough. But do watch out for over-elaboration."
+
+"I'll try to. But I have to be very careful with Claude."
+
+"How d'you mean exactly?"
+
+"He can be very reserved."
+
+"Yes, but you know how to take him. And--well--we can't let the opera be
+anything but a big success, can we?"
+
+If Claude had heard that "we!"
+
+"I say, shall we walk around the garden?" Alston added, after a pause.
+"It isn't quite time to go, and I want to talk over things before Claude
+comes down to see the last of me."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+They went out, and descended the steps from the terrace.
+
+"I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Charmian, that I'm going to bring Crayford
+over whatever happens, whether the opera's done or not. There's heaps
+ready for him to judge by. And you must read him the libretto."
+
+"I?" exclaimed Charmian, startled.
+
+"Yes, you. Study it up! Recite it to yourself. Learn to give it all and
+more than its value. That libretto is going to catch hold of Crayford
+right away, if you read it, and read it well."
+
+When she had recovered from her first shock of surprise Charmian felt
+radiantly happy. She had something to do. Alston, with his shrewd
+outlook, was bringing her a step farther into this enterprise. He was
+right. She remembered Crayford. A woman should read him the libretto,
+and in a _décor_--swiftly her imagination began to work. The _décor_
+should be perfection; and her gown!
+
+"How clever of you to think of that, Alston!" she exclaimed. "I'll study
+as if I were going to be an actress."
+
+"That's the proposition! By Jove, you and I understand each other over
+this. I know Crayford by heart. We've got to what the French call
+'_éblouir_' him when we get him here. We must play upon him with the
+scenery proposition; what he can do in the way of wonderful new stage
+effects. When we've got him thoroughly worked up over the libretto and
+the scenery prop., we'll begin to let him hear the music, but not a
+moment before. We can't be too careful, Mrs. Charmian. Crayford's a man
+who doesn't start going in a hurry on newly laid rails. He wants to test
+every sleeper pretty nearly. But once get him going, and the evening
+express from New York City to Chicago isn't in it with him. Now you and
+I have got to get him started before ever he comes to old Claude. In
+fact--"
+
+He paused, put one finger to his firm round chin.
+
+"But we can decide that a bit later on."
+
+"That? What, Alston?"
+
+"I was going to say it might be as well to get Claude out of the way for
+a day or two while we start on old Crayford here. I suppose it could be
+managed somehow?"
+
+"Alston--" Charmian stopped on the path between the geraniums. "Anything
+can be managed that will help to persuade Mr. Crayford to accept
+Claude's opera."
+
+"Right you are. That's talking! I'll think it all over and let you
+know."
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed. "How I wish the end of August was here! You'll be
+in London. All your time will be filled up. You'll be singing, being
+applauded, _getting on_. And I have to sit here, and wait--wait."
+
+"You'll be studying the libretto."
+
+"So I shall!"
+
+She sent him a grateful look.
+
+"What a good friend you are to us, Alston!" she said, and there was
+heart at that moment in her voice.
+
+"And haven't you been good friends to me? What about the studio? What
+about the Prophet's Chamber? Why, you've given me a sort of a home and
+family, you and old Claude. I can tell you I've often felt lonesome in
+Europe, I've often felt all in, right away from everybody, and my Dad
+trying to starve me out, and all my people dead against what I was
+doing. Since I've known you, well, I've felt quite bully in comparison
+with what it used to be. Claude's success and yours, it's just going to
+be my success too. And that's all there is to it."
+
+He wrung her hand and shouted for Claude.
+
+It was nearly time for him to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Jernington, after sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost
+deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram,
+arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great
+deal of fuss and very little luggage.
+
+The Heaths welcomed him warmly.
+
+Although he was a native of Suffolk, and had only spent a year in
+Germany, he succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student.
+Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with
+Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his
+head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were
+pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just
+above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh.
+Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently
+boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave
+a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed
+for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic
+sides.
+
+In his special line he was a man of extraordinary talent.
+
+He had intended to be a composer, but had little faculty for original
+work. His knowledge of composition, nevertheless, was enormous, and he
+was the best orchestral "coach" in England.
+
+His heart was in his work. His devotion to a clever pupil knew no
+limits. And he considered Claude the cleverest pupil he had ever taught.
+
+Charmian, therefore, accepted him with enthusiasm--boots, tie, little
+roll of white flesh, the whole of him.
+
+He settled down with them in Mustapha, once he had been conveyed into
+the house, as comfortably as a cat in front of whom, with every tender
+precaution, has been placed a bowl of rich milk. In a couple of days it
+seemed as if he had always been there.
+
+Charmian did not see very much of him. The two men toiled with diligence
+despite the great heat which lay over the land. They began early in the
+morning before the sun was high, rested and slept in the middle of the
+day, resumed work about five, and, with an interval for dinner, went on
+till late in the night.
+
+The English Colony had long since broken up. Only the British
+Vice-Consul and his wife remained, and they lived a good way out in the
+country. Since May few people had come to disturb the peace of
+Djenan-el-Maqui. Charmian dwelt in a strange and sun-smitten isolation.
+She was very much alone. Only now and then some French acquaintance
+would call to see her and sit with her for a little while at evening in
+the garden, or in the courtyard of the fountain.
+
+The beauty, the fierce romance of this land, sometimes excited her
+spirit. Sometimes, with fiery hands, it lulled her into a condition
+almost of apathy. She listened to the fountain, she looked at the sea
+which was always blue, and she felt almost as if some part of her nature
+had fallen away from her, leaving her vague and fragmentary, a Charmian
+lacking some virtue, or vice, that had formerly been hers and had made
+her salient. But this apathy did not last long. The sound of
+Jernington's strangely German voice talking loudly above would disturb
+it, perhaps, or the noise of chords or passages powerfully struck upon
+the piano. And immediately the child was with her again, she was busy
+thinking, planning, hoping, longing, concentrated on the future of the
+child.
+
+She had studied the libretto minutely, had practised reading it aloud.
+It was of course written in French, and she found a clever woman,
+retired from a theatrical career in Paris, Madame Thénant, who gave her
+lessons in elocution, and who finally said that she read the libretto
+"_assez bien_." This from Madame Thénant, who had played Dowagers at the
+Comédie Francaise, was a high compliment. Charmian felt that she was
+ready to make an effect on Jacob Crayford. She was in active
+correspondence with Alston Lake, who was still in London, and who had
+had greater success than before. From him she knew that Crayford was in
+town, and would take his usual "cure" in August at Divonne-les-Bains.
+Lake had "begun upon him" warily, but had not yet even hinted at the
+visit to Africa. After his "cure" Crayford proposed making a motor tour.
+He thought nothing of running all over Europe in his car. Lake was going
+presently to speak of the perfect surfaces of the Algerian roads, "the
+best way perhaps of getting him to go to Algeria." He still wanted
+operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in
+London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he?
+Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude
+wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after
+Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband.
+Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually
+returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of
+it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had
+shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected,
+had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he
+saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the
+giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had
+evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away
+and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had
+inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera."
+Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe
+anyway, where folk could get at him if they wanted to?" had been the
+next question. Lake's answer had rather indicated that the composer was
+very glad to have a good stretch of ocean between himself and any "folk"
+who might want to get at him.
+
+This was the point at which the Lake correspondence with Charmian stood
+in the first week of August. His last letter lay on her knee one
+afternoon, as she sat in a hidden nook at the bottom of the garden, with
+delicate bamboos rustling in a warm south wind about her.
+
+Claude knew nothing of this exchange of letters, of all the planning and
+plotting. It was all for him. Some day, when the result was success, he
+should be told everything, unless by that time it was too late, and the
+steps to success were all forgotten. Charmian did nothing to disturb
+him. She wished him to be obsessed by the work, to do it now merely for
+its own sake. The result of his labors would probably be better if that
+were so. If Crayford did come--and he must come! Charmian was willing it
+every day--his coming would be a surprise to Claude, and would seem to
+be a surprise to Charmian. She would get rid of Claude for a few days
+when Lake forewarned her that their arrival was imminent; would persuade
+him to take a little holiday, to go, perhaps, up into the cork woods to
+Hammam R'rirha. He was very pale, had dark circles beneath his eyes. The
+incessant work was beginning to tell upon him severely. Charmian saw
+that. But how could she beg him to rest now, when Jernington had come
+out, when it was so vital to their interests that the opera should be
+finished as soon as possible! Besides, she was certain that even if she
+spoke Claude would not listen to her. Jernington, so he said, always
+gave him an impetus, always excited him. It was a keen pleasure to show
+a man of such deep knowledge what he had been doing, a keener pleasure
+still when he approved, when he said, in his German voice, "That goes!"
+And they had been trying over passages with instrumentalists who had
+been "unearthed," as Jernington expressed it, in Algiers. They had got
+hold of a horn player, had found another man who played the clarinet,
+the violin, and a third instrument.
+
+In fact, they were living for, and in, the opera. And Charmian, devoured
+by her secret ambition, had no heart to play a careful wife's part. She
+had the will to urge her man on. She had no will to hold him back.
+Afterward he could rest, he should rest--on the bed of his laurels.
+
+She smiled now when she thought of that.
+
+Presently she felt that some one was approaching her. She looked up and
+saw Jernington coming down the path, wiping his pale forehead with a
+silk handkerchief in which various colors seemed fortuitously combined.
+
+"Is the work over?" she cried out to him.
+
+He threw up one square-nailed white hand.
+
+"No. But for once he has got a passage all wrong. I have left him to
+correct it. He kicked me out, in fact!"
+
+Jernington threw back his head and laughed gutturally. His laugh always
+contradicted his eyes. They were romantic, but his laugh was prosaic.
+
+He sat down by Charmian and put his hands on his knees. One still
+grasped the handkerchief.
+
+"Dear Mr. Jernington, tell me!" she said. "You know so much. Claude says
+your knowledge is extraordinary. Isn't the opera fine?"
+
+Now Jernington was a specialist, and he was one of those men who cannot
+detach their minds from the subject in which they specialize in order to
+take a broad view. His vision was extraordinarily acute, but it was
+strictly limited. When Charmian spoke of the opera he believed he was
+thinking of the opera as a whole, whereas he was in reality only
+thinking about the orchestration of it.
+
+"It is superb!" he replied enthusiastically. "Never before have I had a
+pupil with such talent as your husband."
+
+With a rapid movement he put one hand to the back of his neck and softly
+rubbed his little roll of white flesh.
+
+"He has an instinct for orchestration such as I have found in no one
+else. Now, for example--"
+
+He flung himself into depths of orchestral knowledge, dragging Charmian
+with him. She was happily engulfed. When they emerged in about half an
+hour's time she again threw out a lure for general praise.
+
+"Then you really admire the opera as a whole? You think it undoubtedly
+fine, don't you?"
+
+Jernington wiped his perspiring face, his forehead, and, finally, his
+whole head and neck, manipulating the huge handkerchief in a masterly
+manner almost worthy of an expensive conjurer.
+
+"It is superb. When it is given, when the world knows that the great
+Heath studied with me--well, I shall have to take a studio as large as
+the Albert Hall, there will be such a rush of pupils. Do you know that
+his employment of the oboe in combination with the flute, the strings
+being divided--"
+
+And once more he plunged down into the depths of orchestral knowledge
+taking Charmian with him. He quoted Prout, he quoted Vincent d'Indy; he
+minutely compared passages in Elgar's second symphony with passages in
+Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony; he dissected the delicate orchestral
+effects in Debussy's _Nuages_ and _Fête Nocturne_, compared the modern
+French methods in orchestration with Richard Strauss's gigantic, and
+sometimes monstrous combinations. But again and again he returned to his
+pupil, Claude. As he talked his enthusiasm mounted. The little roll of
+flesh trembled as he emphatically moved his head. His voice grew
+harsher, more German. He untied and reknotted his flowing cravat, pulled
+up his boots with elastic sides, thrust his cuffs, which were not
+attached to his shirt, violently out of sight up his plump arms.
+
+Charmian could not doubt his admiration for the opera. It was expressed
+in a manner peculiar to Jernington that became almost epileptic, but it
+was undoubtedly sincere.
+
+When he left her and went back to Claude's workroom she was glowing with
+pride and happiness.
+
+"That funny old thing knows!" she thought. "He knows!"
+
+Jernington was usually called an old thing, although he was not yet
+forty.
+
+His departure was due about the twentieth of August, but when that day
+drew near Claude begged him to stay on till the end of the month.
+Charmian was secretly dismayed. She had news from Lake that his campaign
+on Claude's behalf had every prospect of success. Crayford was now at
+Divonne-les-Bains, but had invited Lake to join him in a motor tour as
+soon as his "cure"--by no means a severe one--was over.
+
+"That tour, Mrs. Charmian, as I'm a living man with good prospects, will
+end on the quay at Marseilles, and start again on the quay at Algiers.
+Crayford has tried to bring off a fresh deal with Sennier, but been
+beaten off by the pierrot in petticoats, as he calls the great
+Henriette. She asked for the earth, and all the planets and
+constellations besides. Now they are at daggers drawn. That's bully for
+us. Take out your bottom dollar, and bet it that I bring him over before
+September is ten days old."
+
+September--yes. But Lake was impulsive. He might hurry things, might
+arrive with the impresario sooner. Jernington must not be at
+Djenan-el-Maqui when he arrived. If Claude were found studying with a
+sort of professor Crayford would certainly get a wrong impression. It
+might just make the difference between the success of the great plan and
+its failure. Claude must present himself, or be presented by Lake as a
+master, not as a pupil.
+
+She must get rid of old Jernington as soon as possible.
+
+But it now became alarmingly manifest that old Jernington was in no
+hurry to go. He was one of those persons who arrive with great
+difficulty, but who find an even greater difficulty in bringing
+themselves to the point of departure. Never having been out of Europe
+before, it seemed that he was not unwilling to end his days in a
+tropical exile. He "felt" the heat terribly, but professed to like it,
+was charmed with the villa and the comfort of the life, and "really had
+no need to hurry away" now that he had definitely relinquished his
+annual holiday at Bury St. Edmunds.
+
+As Claude wished him to stay on, and had no suspicion that any plan was
+in the wind, Charmian found herself in a difficult position as the days
+went by and the end of August drew near. Her imagination revolved about
+all sorts of preposterous means for getting rid of the poor fellow, whom
+she honestly liked, and to whom she was grateful for his enthusiastic
+labors. She thought of making a hole in his mosquito net, to permit the
+entry of those marauders whom he dreaded; of casually mentioning that
+there had been cases suspiciously resembling Asiatic cholera in the
+Casbah of Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must
+take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a
+telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in
+his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought
+of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of
+circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died
+almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in
+number as they were robust in constitution.
+
+She dismissed the idea of the telegram. She even said to herself that of
+course she had never entertained it. But what was she to do?
+
+She tried to be a little cold to Jernington, thinking it might be
+possible to convey to him subtly the idea that perhaps his visit had
+lasted long enough, that his hostess had other plans in which his
+presence was not included.
+
+But Jernington was conscious of no subtleties except those connected
+with the employment of musical instruments. And Charmian found it almost
+impossible to be glacial to such a simple and warm-hearted creature. His
+very boots seemed to claim her cordiality with their unabashed elastic
+sides. The way in which he pushed his cuffs out of sight appealed to the
+goodness of her heart, although it displeased her æsthetic sense. She
+had to recognize the fact that old Jernington was one of those tiresome
+people you cannot be unkind to.
+
+Nevertheless she must get him out of the house and out of Africa.
+
+If he stuck to the plan of leaving them at the end of August there would
+probably be no need of diplomacy, or of forcible ejection; but it had
+become obvious to Charmian that the last thing old Jernington was
+capable of doing was just that sticking to a plan.
+
+"Do you mean to sail on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ or the _Ville d'Alger_?"
+she asked him.
+
+"I wonder," he replied artlessly. "In my idea Berlioz was not really the
+founder of modern orchestration as some have asserted. Your husband and
+I--"
+
+She could not stop him. She began to feel almost as if she hated the
+delicious orchestral family. Jernington had a special passion for the
+oboe. Charmian found herself absurdly feeling against that rustic and
+Arcadian charmer an enmity such as she had scarcely ever experienced
+against a human being. One night she spoke unkindly, almost with a
+warmth of malignity, about the oboe. Jernington sprang amorously to its
+defense. She tried to quarrel with him, but was disarmed by his fidelity
+to the object of his affections. She was too much a woman to rail
+against fidelity.
+
+The 30th of August arrived. In the afternoon of that day she received
+the following telegram from Alston Lake:
+
+    "Crayford and I start motor trip to-morrow he thinks Germany have no
+    fear all right Marseilles or I Dutchman.--LAKE."
+
+As she read this telegram Charmian knew that the two men would come to
+Algiers. She believed in Alston Lake. He had an extraordinary faculty
+for carrying things through; and Crayford was fond of him. Crayford had
+been kind, generous to the boy, and loved him as a man may love his own
+good action. Lake, as he had said in private to Charmian, could "do a
+lot with dear old Crayford."
+
+He would certainly bring Crayford to Mustapha. Old Jernington must go.
+
+The 31st of August dawned and began to fade.
+
+Charmian felt desperate. She resolved to tackle Claude on the matter.
+Old Jernington would never understand unless she said to him, "Go! For
+Heaven's sake, go!" And even then he would probably think that she was
+saying the reverse of what she meant, in an effort after that type of
+playful humor which, for all she knew, perhaps still prevailed in his
+native Suffolk. She had bent Claude to her purposes before. She must
+bend him to her purpose now.
+
+"Claudie," she said, "you know what an old dear I think Jernington,
+don't you?"
+
+Claude looked up at her with rather searching eyes. She had come into
+his workroom at sunset. All day she had been considering what would be
+the best thing to do. Old Jernington was strolling in the garden smoking
+a very German pipe after having been "at it" for many hours.
+
+"Jernington?"
+
+"Yes, old Jernington."
+
+"Of course he's an excellent fellow. What about him?"
+
+She sat down delicately. She was looking very calm, and her movement was
+very quiet.
+
+"Well, I'm beginning almost to hate him!" she remarked quietly.
+
+"What do you mean, Charmian?"
+
+"If I tell you are you going to get angry?"
+
+"Why should I get angry?"
+
+"You are looking very fierce."
+
+He altered his expression.
+
+"It's the work," he muttered. "When one grinds as I do one does feel
+fierce."
+
+"That's why I'm beginning to--well, love Mr. Jernington a little less
+than I used to. He's almost killing you."
+
+"Jernington!"
+
+"Yes. It's got to stop."
+
+Her voice and manner had quite changed. She spoke now with earnest and
+very serious decision.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The work, Claude. I've seen for some time that unless you take a short
+holiday you are going to break down."
+
+"Well, but you have always encouraged me to work!"
+
+She noticed a faint suspicion in his expression and voice.
+
+"I know. I've been too eager, too keen on the opera. I haven't realized
+what a strain you are going through. But--it's just like a woman, I'm
+afraid!--now I see another urging you on, I see plainly. It may be
+jealousy--"
+
+"You jealous of old Jernington!"
+
+"I believe I am a tiny bit. But, apart really from that, you are looking
+dreadful these last few days. When you asked Jernington to prolong his
+visit I was horrified. You see, he's come to it all fresh. And then he's
+not creating. That's the tiring work. It's all very well helping and
+criticising."
+
+"That's very true," Claude said.
+
+He sighed heavily. She had told him that he was very tired, and he felt
+that he was very tired.
+
+"It is a great strain," he added.
+
+"It has got to stop, Claude."
+
+There was a little silence. Then she said:
+
+"These extra months have made a great difference, haven't they?"
+
+"Enormous."
+
+"You've got on very far?"
+
+"Farther than I had thought would be possible."
+
+Her heart bounded. But she only said:
+
+"There's a boat to Marseilles the day after to-morrow. Old Jernington is
+going by it."
+
+"Oh, but Charmian, we can't pack the dear old fellow--"
+
+"The dear old fellow is going by that boat, Claudie."
+
+"But what a tyrant you are!"
+
+"I've been selfish. My keenness about your work has blinded me.
+Jernington has made me see. We've been two slave-drivers. It can't go
+on. If he could stay and be different--but he can't. He's a marvel of
+learning, but he has only one subject--orchestration. You've got to
+forget that for a little. So Jernington must go. Dear old boy! When I
+see your pale cheeks and your burning eyes I--I--"
+
+Tears came into her eyes. From beneath the trickster the woman arose.
+Her own words touched her suddenly, made her understand how Claude had
+sacrificed himself to his work, and so to her ambition. She got up and
+turned away.
+
+"Old Jernington shall go by the _Maréchal Bugeaud_," she said, in a
+voice that slightly shook.
+
+And by the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ old Jernington did go.
+
+So ingeniously did Charmian manage things that he believed he went of
+his own accord, indeed that it had been his "idea" to go. She told
+Claude to leave it to her and not to say one word. Then she went to
+Jernington, and began to talk of his extraordinary influence over her
+husband. He soon pulled at his boots, thrust his cuffs up his arms, and
+showed other unmistakable symptoms of gratification.
+
+"You can do anything with him," she said presently. "I wish I could."
+
+Jernington protested with guttural exclamations.
+
+"He's killing himself," she resumed. "And I have to sit by and see it,
+and say nothing."
+
+"Killing himself!"
+
+Jernington, who believed in women, was shocked.
+
+"With overwork. He's on the verge of a complete breakdown. And it's you,
+Mr. Jernington, it's all you!"
+
+Jernington was more than shocked. His gratification had vanished. A
+piteous, almost a guilty expression, came into his large fair face.
+
+"Ach!" he exclaimed. "What have I done?"
+
+"Oh, it's not your fault. But Claude almost worships you. He thinks
+there is no one like you. He's afraid to lose a moment of time while you
+are with him. Your learning, your enthusiasm excite him till he's beside
+himself. He can't rest with such a worker as you in the house, and no
+wonder. You are an inspiration to him. Who could rest with such an
+influence near? What are we to do? Unless he has a complete holiday he
+is going to break completely down. Do watch him to-day! Notice! See for
+yourself!"
+
+Jernington, much impressed--for Charmian's despair had been very
+definite indeed, "oleographic in type," as she acknowledged to
+herself--did notice, did see for himself, and inquired innocently of
+Charmian what was to be done.
+
+"I leave that to you," she answered, fixing her eyes almost hypnotically
+upon him.
+
+Secretly she was willing him to go. She was saying in her mind: "Go! Go!
+Go!" was striving to "suggestion" him.
+
+"Perhaps--" he paused, and pulled his cuffs down over his large, pale
+hands.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps I had better take him away for a little holiday."
+
+She could have slapped him. But she only said eagerly:
+
+"To England, you mean! Why not? There's a boat going the day after
+to-morrow take your passage on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_. Don't say a word
+to Claude. But and leave the rest to me. I know how to manage Claude.
+And if I get a little help from you!"
+
+Old Jernington took his passage on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ and left the
+rest to Charmian, with this result. Late the next night, when they were
+all going to bed, she whispered to him, "I've put a note in your room.
+Don't say a word to him!" She touched her lips. Much intrigued by all
+this feminine diplomacy Jernington went to his room, and found the
+following note under a candlestick. (Charmian had a sense of the
+dramatic.)
+
+     "DEAR MR. JERNINGTON,--Claude _won't_ go. It's no use for
+     me to say anything. He is in a highly nervous state brought on by
+     this overwork. I see the only thing is to let him have his own way
+     in everything. Don't even mention that we had thought of this
+     holiday in England. The least thing excites him. And as he _won't_
+     go, what is the use of speaking of it? If I can get him to join you
+     later well and good. For the moment we can only give in and be
+     discreet. You have been such a dear to us both. The house will
+     seem quite different without you. _Not a word to Claude. Burn
+     this!_
+                                                          "C. H."
+
+And old Jernington burnt it in the flame of the candle, and went away
+alone on the _Maréchal Bugeaud_ the next morning, with apologies to
+Claude.
+
+The house did seem to Charmian quite different without him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Two days later, on the 4th of September, Charmian had got rid of Claude
+as well as of old Jernington, and, in a condition of expectation that
+was tinged agreeably with triumph, was awaiting the arrival of important
+visitors. She had received a telegram from Lake:
+
+"Have got him into the Chateaux country going on to Orange hope on hope
+ever--ALSTON."
+
+And she knew that the fateful motor would inevitably find its way to the
+quay at Marseilles.
+
+She had had no difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington
+had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked
+from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt
+as if in the little house which had seen his work he could not rest.
+
+"Go away," Charmian said to him. "Take a couple of weeks' complete
+holiday."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"But I am not going."
+
+He looked surprised. But she noticed that he did not look displeased.
+Nevertheless, thinking of the future and remembering Alston Lake's
+advice, she continued:
+
+"You need a complete change of people as well as of place. Is there
+anyone left in Algiers?"
+
+"If you don't come," he interrupted her quickly, "I'd much rather go
+quite alone. It will rest me much more."
+
+She saw by the look in his eyes that this sudden prospect of loneliness
+appealed to him strongly. He moved his shoulders, stretched out his
+arms.
+
+"Yes, it will do me good. You are right, Charmian. It is sweet of you to
+think for me as you do."
+
+And he bent down and kissed her.
+
+Then he hurried to his room, packed a very small trunk, and took the
+first train, as she had suggested, to Hammam R'rirha.
+
+"If you move from there mind you let me know your address," she said, as
+he was starting.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"I want always to know just where you are."
+
+"Of course I shall let you know. But I think I shall stay quietly at
+Hammam R'rirha."
+
+Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came:
+
+     "Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the _Timgad_
+     Hurrah--ALSTON."
+
+She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she
+hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they
+would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more
+than well. The omens were good. She saw in them a tendency. Success was
+in the air. She did not doubt, she would not doubt, that Crayford's
+coming meant his eventual acceptance of the opera. The combination of
+Alston and herself was a strong one. They knew their own minds; they
+were both enthusiasts; they both had strong wills. Crayford was devoted
+to his protégé, and he admired her. She had seen admiration in his eyes
+the first time they had looked at her. Madame Sennier had surely never
+worked for her husband more strenuously and more effectively than she,
+Charmian, had worked for Claude; and she would work more strenuously,
+more effectively, during the next few days. The libretto! She snatched
+it up and sat down once more to study it. But she could not sit still,
+and she took it down with her into the garden. There she paced up and
+down, reading it aloud, reciting the strongest passages in it without
+looking at the words. She nearly knew the whole of it by heart.
+
+When the day came on which the _Timgad_ was due she was in a fever of
+excitement. She went about the little house re-arranging the furniture,
+putting flowers in all the vases. Of course Mr. Crayford and Alston
+would stay at a hotel. But no doubt they would spend a good deal of time
+at the villa. She would insist on their dining with her that night.
+
+"Jeanne! Jeanne!"
+
+She hurried toward the kitchen. It occurred to her that she was not
+supposed to know that the two men were coming. Oh, but of course, when
+he found them there, Claude would understand that naturally Alston had
+telegraphed from Marseilles. So she took "La Grande Jeanne" into her
+confidence without a scruple. They must have a perfect little dinner, a
+dinner for three such as had never yet been prepared in Mustapha!
+
+She and Jeanne were together for more than an hour. Afterward she went
+out to watch for the steamer from a point of vantage on the Boulevard
+Bleu. Just after one o'clock she saw it gliding toward the harbor over
+the glassy sea. Then she went slowly home in the glaring heat, rested,
+put on a white gown, very simple but quite charming, and a large white
+hat, and went out into the Arab court with a book to await their
+arrival.
+
+It was half-past four when a sound struck on her ears, a loud and
+trembling chord, a buzz, the rattle of a "cut-out." The blessed noises
+drew near. They were certainly in the little by-road which led to the
+house. They ceased. She did not move, but sat where she was with a
+fast-beating heart.
+
+"Well, this is a cute little snuggery and no mistake!"
+
+It was Crayford's voice in the court of the bougainvillea.
+
+She bent her head and pored over her book. In a moment Alston Lake's
+voice said, in French:
+
+"In the garden! No, don't call her, Bibi, we will find her!"
+
+"Look well on the stage that boy!" said Crayford's voice. "No mistake at
+all about its being picturesque over here."
+
+Then the two men came in sight in the sunshine. Instantly Alston said,
+as he took off his Panama hat:
+
+"You got my wire from Marseilles, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I was expecting you! But I didn't know when. Mr. Crayford, how
+kind of you to come over here in September! No one ever does."
+
+She had got up rather languidly and was holding out her hand.
+
+"Guess it's the proper time to come," said Crayford, squeezing her hand
+with his dried-up palm. "See a bit of the real thing! I don't believe
+in tourist seasons at all. Tourists always choose the wrong time, seems
+to me."
+
+By the look in his eyes as he glanced around him Charmian saw that he
+was under the spell of Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"You must have tea, iced drinks, whatever you like," she said. "I'm all
+alone--as you see."
+
+"What's that?" said Crayford.
+
+"My husband is away."
+
+Crayford's lips pursed themselves. For a moment he looked like a man who
+finds he has been "had." In that moment Charmian knew that his real
+reason in "running over" to North Africa had certainly been the opera.
+She did not suppose he had acknowledged this to Lake, or ever would
+acknowledge it to anyone. But she was quite certain of it.
+
+"Gone to England?" asked Crayford, carelessly.
+
+"Oh, no. He's been working too hard, and run away by himself for a
+little holiday to a place near here, Hammam R'rirha. He'll be sorry to
+miss you. I know how busy you always are, so I suppose you'll only stay
+a day or two."
+
+Crayford's keen eyes suddenly fastened upon her.
+
+"Yes, I haven't too much time," he remarked drily.
+
+They all sat down, and again Crayford looked around, stretching out his
+short and muscular legs.
+
+"Cute, and no mistake!" he observed, with a sigh, as he pulled at the
+tiny beard. "Think of living here now! Pity I'm not a composer, eh,
+Alston?"
+
+He ended with a laugh.
+
+"And what's your husband been up to, Mrs. Heath?" he continued, settling
+himself more comfortably in his big chair, and pushing his white Homburg
+hat backward to leave his brown forehead bare to a tiny breeze which
+spoke softly, very gently, of the sea. "You've been over here for a big
+bunch of Sundays, Alston tells me, week-days too."
+
+"Oh--" She seemed to be hesitating.
+
+Alston's boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.
+
+"Well, we came here--we wanted to be quiet."
+
+"You've got out of sight of Broadway, that's certain."
+
+Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of casual matters.
+The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the
+radiant air. And Crayford said:
+
+"It's cute! It's cute!"
+
+He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently
+he said:
+
+"Seems to me years since I've rested like this, Alston!"
+
+"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh.
+"I've never seen you do it before."
+
+"'Cepting the cure. And that don't amount to anything."
+
+"Stay and dine, won't you?" said Charmian. "If you're not bored."
+
+"Bored!" said Crayford.
+
+"We'll dine just as we are. I'll go in and see the cook about it."
+
+"Very good of you I'm sure," said Crayford. "But I don't want to put you
+out."
+
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"The Excelsior," said Lake.
+
+"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."
+
+She got up and went slowly into the house.
+
+"Stunning figure she's got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following
+her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now
+I'm over here I ought to have a look at what he's up to. She seemed to
+want to avoid the subject, I thought. D'you think he's writing on
+commission? Or perhaps someone's seen the music. The Metropolitan
+crowd--"
+
+They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston
+Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some
+secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario
+bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.
+
+Charmian's little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a
+seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his
+armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he
+was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with.
+That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out
+into the court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth,
+as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce
+stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.
+
+"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"
+
+Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward;
+Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity.
+Or perhaps she--no, she was not conscious of having brought it about
+deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o'clock that night, sitting with
+a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to
+the two men who were smoking near the fountain.
+
+It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked
+up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had
+done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive
+mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The
+opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It
+had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke
+almost with emotion--a liqueur-glass of excellent old brandy in his
+hand--of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely
+before the coming generations.
+
+"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and
+bring forward the young. Aren't it, Alston?"
+
+Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in
+combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he
+existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about
+money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston
+also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his
+talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be,
+thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could
+she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner,
+when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were
+centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which
+only comes on a night of nights?
+
+The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or
+did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the
+definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each
+other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was
+able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to
+"come about of itself."
+
+Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of,
+Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and
+applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as
+only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a
+rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
+We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder
+for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's
+agreeable voice.
+
+Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
+The night was so vast, so starry and still, that--as he afterward said
+to himself--"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had
+not studied with Madame Thénant for nothing. This was an almost supreme
+moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another
+opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame
+Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before
+her. She took her feet off the stool--she was no odalisque to be
+pampered with footstools and cushions--and she let herself go.
+
+Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:
+
+"That's the best libretto since _Carmen_, and I know something about
+libretti."
+
+Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:
+
+"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"
+
+Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was
+incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.
+
+"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed
+to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and
+yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted
+him--"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from
+wherever he is?"
+
+With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.
+
+"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But--but I think he needs the holiday he
+is taking badly."
+
+"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't
+it, Alston?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.
+
+The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was
+dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom
+forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.
+
+"Well, I might. But--why?"
+
+"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"
+
+"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."
+
+"Well then?"
+
+"The only thing is he needs complete rest."
+
+"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the
+resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it
+comes straight from me."
+
+He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar
+he had enjoyed that night.
+
+"We've no room for resters in New York City."
+
+"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New
+York City."
+
+As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long
+drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of
+the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:
+
+"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly.
+Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"
+
+When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till
+silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!
+
+And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she
+would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her
+lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a
+"rester." She would not surely "get left."
+
+Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.
+
+"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late.
+Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. _Bonne nuit._"
+
+"_Bonne nuit, madame._"
+
+On the following day she received a note from Alston.
+
+     "DEAR MRS. CHARMIAN,--You are a wonder. No one on earth
+     could have managed him better. You might have known him from the
+     cradle--yours, of course, not his! I'm taking him around to-day. He
+     wants to go to Djenan-el-Maqui, I can see that. But I'm keeping him
+     off it. Lie low and mum's the word as to Claude.--Your fellow
+     conspirator,
+                                                        "ALSTON."
+
+It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day
+alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted,
+presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out
+afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved
+attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion
+of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for
+Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of
+herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be
+produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she
+strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had
+the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long
+had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian
+could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone
+with Claude. Now they were a _ménage à trois_. She recalled the
+beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable
+they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The
+river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.
+
+Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a
+thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such
+a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her
+strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If
+only Alston would come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She
+looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin
+gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She
+listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African
+nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no
+sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her
+long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her
+movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her
+small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry.
+Her nose was twitching.
+
+"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.
+
+She lifted the dog on to her knees.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Caroline barked faintly again.
+
+"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."
+
+Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down
+with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm
+barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great
+animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased,
+and in a moment a voice called:
+
+"Charmian! Where are you?"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had
+spoken the name to herself, for herself.
+
+"I'm out here on the terrace!"
+
+She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come
+when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by
+telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to
+tell him.
+
+He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.
+
+"Are you surprised?"
+
+He kissed her.
+
+"Very! Very surprised!"
+
+"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only
+decided to-day, quite suddenly."
+
+"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"
+
+"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I
+was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for
+to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the
+opera."
+
+Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.
+
+"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.
+
+"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."
+
+She wondered why, but she did not say so.
+
+"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt--it seemed so absurd my
+rushing back like this."
+
+He ended with a little laugh.
+
+"Who do you think is here?" she said.
+
+"Here?"
+
+He glanced round.
+
+"I mean in Algiers."
+
+He looked at her with searching eyes.
+
+"Someone we know well?"
+
+"Two people."
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"No--guess!"
+
+"Women? Men?"
+
+"Men."
+
+"Sennier?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Max Elliot?"
+
+"No. One is--Alston Lake."
+
+"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"
+
+"He has brought someone with him."
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"Jacob Crayford."
+
+"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"
+
+"He's taking a holiday motoring."
+
+"But to come to Algiers in summer!"
+
+"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."
+
+"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"
+
+"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past midnight. He wants
+to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."
+
+"Wants to see me?"
+
+"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and
+Alston."
+
+He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face
+clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"I think you sound as if you minded."
+
+"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"
+
+"He said, 'It's the best libretto since _Carmen_.'"
+
+"It is a good libretto."
+
+"He was enthusiastic. Claude"--she put her hand on his arm--"he wants to
+hear your music."
+
+"Has he said so?"
+
+"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when
+he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he
+suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."
+
+"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."
+
+"It almost seems--" She paused.
+
+"What?"
+
+"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had
+felt you ought to be here."
+
+"Are you glad?" he said.
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"Did you mean--"
+
+"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise
+for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."
+
+"But I have never even thought--"
+
+"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and
+wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not
+be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he
+would take it it would be too splendid."
+
+"He never will."
+
+"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."
+
+"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."
+
+"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed,
+almost angrily.
+
+She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin
+their prospects.
+
+"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a
+little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can--"
+
+She pulled herself up sharply.
+
+"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much,
+and then you speak like this."
+
+Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this
+breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.
+
+"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I
+don't know why."
+
+But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition
+was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something,
+was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she
+had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget
+Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have
+pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.
+
+"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."
+
+Claude put his arm round her gently.
+
+"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very
+aggravating," he said. "But--"
+
+He stopped, said nothing more.
+
+"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed--"your own child. Then
+others will believe in it, too. Alston does."
+
+She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.
+
+"And Jacob Crayford shall."
+
+After a moment she added:
+
+"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."
+
+"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.
+
+But she only answered:
+
+"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"
+
+Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow
+linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver
+cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into
+the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.
+
+"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.
+
+"Yaw."
+
+Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge
+Havana.
+
+"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up.
+"Of course she telegraphed him to come."
+
+"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.
+
+"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.
+
+He sat down and crossed his legs.
+
+"No. But even you can't see what isn't."
+
+"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at
+Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the
+big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well,
+that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent
+little thing, that's all."
+
+Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable
+expression.
+
+"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his
+life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to
+Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to
+hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to
+get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it.
+See?"
+
+He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very
+apparent.
+
+"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.
+
+"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business.
+You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car
+to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can
+tell her a good bit depends on it."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same
+half-humorous dryness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?"
+said Alston, with bland formality.
+
+"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."
+
+At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to
+distort slightly one corner of his mouth.
+
+Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She
+was in a state of great excitement.
+
+"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it
+comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in
+such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel
+almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be
+guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him?
+Just think of those two shut in together!"
+
+As Alston got into the car she repeated:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+"_Allez au Diable!_" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a
+Frenchman.
+
+"_Bien, m'sieu!_"
+
+"And--" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours
+to get there."
+
+"_Très bien, m'sieu._"
+
+"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off.
+"Knows how to time things!"
+
+It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.
+
+"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.
+
+"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."
+
+"Better dine with me."
+
+She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.
+
+"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"
+
+"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."
+
+"But what will people think?"
+
+"What they always do, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, but what's that?"
+
+"I've wondered for years!"
+
+He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.
+
+At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on
+returning home.
+
+"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.
+
+Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.
+
+"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."
+
+"Yes, you may."
+
+As they drove off she exclaimed:
+
+"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do
+you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own
+house."
+
+"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."
+
+"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."
+
+"But if he doesn't stop his?"
+
+"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel
+so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same
+on mine."
+
+"Well, but we meet everything on the--"
+
+"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us
+on any side."
+
+Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.
+
+They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the
+Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:
+
+"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."
+
+"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"
+
+Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a
+violent push in the small of his back.
+
+"Stop! Stop!"
+
+He pulled up the horses with a jerk.
+
+"Hello!" said Crayford.
+
+He took off his hat.
+
+"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.
+
+"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.
+
+They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by
+the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big
+cigar.
+
+"Have you dined?" said Alston.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Have you--" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the
+opera all this time?"
+
+"Yaw."
+
+He blew out a smoke ring.
+
+"Hearing it and talking things over."
+
+Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.
+
+"Then you--then I suppose--"
+
+"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full
+as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will
+tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"
+
+"No. I'm almost there."
+
+"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"
+
+"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All
+the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of
+times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."
+
+She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was
+now burning with impatience to be with Claude.
+
+"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses
+moved forward.
+
+"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that
+quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."
+
+He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did
+not attempt to make him talk.
+
+When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little
+dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning
+her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at
+the cold chicken he was eating.
+
+"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"
+
+She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the
+dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"
+
+Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which
+he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something
+else.
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"
+
+"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean,
+of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've
+composed, I mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he say? What did he think of it?"
+
+"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."
+
+"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose we did."
+
+"What did he say, then?"
+
+"All sorts of things."
+
+"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."
+
+"Well, he liked some of it."
+
+"Only some?"
+
+"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of
+alterations."
+
+"Where? Which part?"
+
+"I should have to show you."
+
+"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can
+easily do that without showing me to-night."
+
+"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene--"
+
+"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy
+enough. You could do that in a day."
+
+"Do you think one has only to sit down?"
+
+"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when
+you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"
+
+"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."
+
+"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And
+if you do what he says, what then?"
+
+"How d'you mean?"
+
+"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"
+
+"He didn't commit himself."
+
+"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered
+something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."
+
+"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great
+opportunities for new scenic effects."
+
+"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he
+would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"
+
+She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been
+working for, waiting--longing for, for months and years! Caroline!
+Caroline!"
+
+Caroline hastily indicated her presence.
+
+"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces!
+There! And the sugary part, too!"
+
+"You'll make her ill."
+
+"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think,
+you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet
+I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it
+would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"
+
+"I don't deny it. But--"
+
+"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away
+your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's
+pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others
+shall know too. The whole world shall know."
+
+He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a
+sobriety that almost made her despair:
+
+"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be
+able to consent to make changes in the opera."
+
+Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath
+on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other.
+It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last
+stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much
+alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with
+a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his
+success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his
+work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of
+his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever
+does, about the heels of tragedy.
+
+Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and
+before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States,
+and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one
+circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other
+delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music
+halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in
+halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first
+men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile
+with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath
+the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had
+been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that
+had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And
+this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling
+its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the
+inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always
+wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class
+artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of
+New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."
+
+Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on
+Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in
+productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the
+staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and
+had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in
+the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of
+dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was
+prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last.
+He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a
+profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever.
+Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned
+a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he
+would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less
+than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often
+carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win
+out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him
+inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises
+as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often
+led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity.
+He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood,"
+and was for ever on the look-out for it.
+
+He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a
+long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names
+he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But
+people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not
+touch them.
+
+Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was
+passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his
+side because of gratitude, and in expectation.
+
+The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was
+absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his
+ideas.
+
+"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's
+to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the
+conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if
+the darned thing's a failure."
+
+There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside,
+the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered
+with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue
+could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the
+calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly,
+unexpectedly.
+
+Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little
+rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him,
+bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences
+it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And
+from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in
+concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips
+to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes
+travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.
+
+"Then if we--I mean if my husband does what you wish, you _will_ spend
+thousands over it?" she said, "you _will_ produce it, give it its
+chance?"
+
+Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything
+definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time
+over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But
+he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which
+could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole
+affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude
+dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face
+of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt
+that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a
+successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the
+face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate
+for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within
+him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that
+perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent.
+Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not
+strike it down into the dust of despair.
+
+Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that
+was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth,
+looked at Charmian, and said:
+
+"Yah!"
+
+Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.
+But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back,
+beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.
+
+"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going
+to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the
+only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and
+bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever
+trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get
+down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or
+not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.
+I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your
+getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and
+your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you
+write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.
+You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the
+best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start,
+but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you
+to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though
+you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the
+center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of
+feet above it."
+
+"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.
+
+"Ah!" breathed Charmian.
+
+Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he
+twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably
+thought Napoleonic.
+
+"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and
+my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"--his tone was
+changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost
+paternal--"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big
+success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger--eh, little
+lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"
+
+"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.
+
+His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of
+the room, out of the villa, to rush away--away into some desert place,
+and to be alone.
+
+"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."
+
+"I can't help--how would you have me look?"
+
+"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"
+
+"Claudie, we all only want--"
+
+"I know--I know!"
+
+He clenched his wet hands.
+
+"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
+
+"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what
+we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in
+this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell--don't mind me, little
+lady! I'll stop right there!--we're getting on to something that's going
+to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about--'s going to
+astonish--the--world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"
+
+And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made
+no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather
+feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the
+tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were
+moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when
+the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it
+glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this
+opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own
+consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his
+own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be
+really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he
+had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that
+narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly
+what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all
+his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.
+
+And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm--a genuine
+enthusiasm--of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be
+carried on by their hopes.
+
+As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where
+Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every
+day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and
+business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude
+had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre
+eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The
+more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and
+interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out
+and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.
+
+"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or
+"that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"--thought of by himself--"makes
+your opera a different thing."
+
+And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he
+would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it
+off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he
+reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded
+came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young
+people.
+
+"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got
+hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and
+I'll make him another Battistini. See here"--and he turned sharply to
+Claude--"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could
+easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why,
+it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I
+wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes
+first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But
+the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the
+opera."
+
+That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude
+rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he,
+the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of
+form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite
+shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all.
+But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as
+strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in
+hand.
+
+"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.
+
+Claude was tempted to reply:
+
+"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."
+
+But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with
+Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He
+admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities,
+which delighted her.
+
+"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never
+met an Englishwoman like her!"
+
+Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man,
+recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated
+before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She
+felt almost as if she were a creator.
+
+"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."
+
+While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised
+by Crayford--and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of
+those about him, scourged to his work by their desires--Lake studied the
+baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian
+"put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."
+
+"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I
+can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."
+
+"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.
+
+"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he
+answered. "Now, see here--"
+
+They plunged deep into the libretto.
+
+Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the
+opera.
+
+"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs.
+I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."
+
+That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian
+went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of
+odd people.
+
+"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.
+
+And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls.
+They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other
+nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to
+New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who
+had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the
+spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.
+
+"Claude"--the composer was Claude to him now--"can write in something
+weird to go with it," he said.
+
+And Charmian of course agreed.
+
+It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era
+Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully
+all the changes which Crayford demanded.
+
+"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.
+
+"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when
+I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to
+think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the
+changes. I can see that."
+
+"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the
+chance you are offering him."
+
+"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."
+
+"He realizes it."
+
+"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."
+
+"I won't tell a soul."
+
+"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude
+against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for
+the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's
+going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is
+expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"--Charmian
+thrilled at that word--"just about the same time, a day or two before,
+or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or
+the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been
+seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what
+opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to
+run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night
+stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till
+every note in his score's in its place."
+
+"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."
+
+"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from
+what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the
+writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a
+scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed
+everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,'
+I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have
+to bring him over."
+
+"Of course! Of course!"
+
+"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like
+old bones."
+
+He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a
+grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:
+
+"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it
+if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."
+
+He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:
+
+"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it,
+though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's
+a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish
+of it."
+
+"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.
+
+From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must
+be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just
+finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the
+small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room
+on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
+
+"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.
+
+"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window,
+Claudie."
+
+"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."
+
+He spoke almost irritably, like a man whose nerves were tired. But
+Charmian did not seem to notice it. She looked bright, resolute,
+dominant, as she replied in her clear voice:
+
+"Let it come in. I like to hear it. It is the voice of the world we are
+here to conquer. Don't look at me like that, dear old boy, but open the
+window. The air will do you good. You're tired. I shouldn't have allowed
+you to work during the voyage."
+
+"I had to work."
+
+"Well, very soon you'll be able to rest, and on laurels."
+
+Claude went to open the big window, pulling aside the blind, while
+Charmian lighted a cigarette, and curled herself up on the padded sofa.
+And as, in a moment, the roar of the gigantic city swelled in a fierce
+crescendo, she leaned forward with the cigarette in her hand, listening
+intently, half smiling, with an eager light in her eyes.
+
+"What a city it is!" she said, as Claude turned and came toward her. "It
+makes London seem almost like a village. I'm glad it is here the opera
+is to be given for the first time."
+
+"So am I," he said, sitting down.
+
+But he spoke almost gloomily, looking at the floor. His face was white
+and too expressive, and his left hand, as it hung down between his
+knees, fluttered. He lifted it, turning the fingers inward.
+
+"Why?" Charmian said.
+
+He looked up at her.
+
+"Oh, I--they are all strangers here."
+
+She said nothing, and just then the telephone bell sounded. Mr. Alston
+Lake was below asking if Mr. Heath was in.
+
+In a moment he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and
+vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost
+greedily, of expectation and virile optimism.
+
+"My!" he said, as he shook them both by the hand. "You look settled in
+for the night."
+
+"So we are," said Charmian.
+
+Alston laughed.
+
+"I've come to take you to the theater."
+
+"But they're not rehearsing to-night," said Claude.
+
+"No; but Crayford's trying effects."
+
+"Mr. Crayford! Is he back from Philadelphia?" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"Been back an hour and hard at work already. He sent me to fetch you.
+They're all up on the stage trying to get the locust effect."
+
+"The locusts! Wait a minute, Alston! I'll change my gown."
+
+She hurried out of the room.
+
+"Well, old chap, what's up? You don't look too pleased," said Alston to
+Claude as the door shut. "Don't you want to come out? But we must put
+our backs into this, you know. The fight's on, and a bully big fight it
+is. Seen the papers to-day?"
+
+"No. I haven't had a minute. I've been going through the orchestration
+with Meroni."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He was very nice," answered Claude evasively. "But what's in the
+papers?"
+
+"A bit of news that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The
+Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new
+opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be
+ready by the first of March."
+
+"What does it matter?"
+
+"Well, I like that! It takes all the wind out of our sails. In a big
+race the getting off is half the battle. We were coming first. But if I
+know anything of Crayford we shall come first even now. It's all Madame
+Sennier. She's mad against Crayford and the opera and you, and she's
+specially mad against Mrs. Charmian. The papers to-night are full of a
+lot of nonsense about the libretto."
+
+"Which libretto?"
+
+"Yours. Apparently Madame Sennier's been saying it was really written
+for Sennier and had been promised to him."
+
+"That's a lie."
+
+"Of course it is. But she's spread herself on it finely, I can tell you.
+Crayford's simply delighted."
+
+"Delighted, when I'm accused of mean conduct, of stealing another man's
+property."
+
+"It's no use getting furious over our papers! Doesn't pay! Besides, it
+makes a story, works up public interest. Still, I think she might have
+kept out Mrs. Charmian's name."
+
+"Charmian is in it?"
+
+"Yes, a lot of rubbish about her hearing what a stunner the libretto
+was, and rushing over to Paris to bribe it away before Sennier had
+considered it in its finished state."
+
+"How abominable! I shall--"
+
+"I know, but I wouldn't. Crayford says it will give value to the
+libretto, prepare the public mind for a masterpiece, and help to carry
+your music to success."
+
+"I see! With this and the locusts!"
+
+He turned away toward the open window, through which came the incessant
+roar of traffic, the sound of motor horns, and now, for a moment, a
+chiming of bells from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
+
+"Well, we must do all we know. We mustn't give away a single chance. The
+whole Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up
+the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than
+any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a
+deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a
+crowd of pressmen around at the theater about it to-night, you can bet.
+Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or Crayford'll be
+raging."
+
+Claude stood still for an instant, looking from Alston to Charmian, who
+walked in briskly, wearing a sealskin coat that reached to her heels,
+and buttoning long white gloves. Then he said, "I won't be a minute!"
+and went out of the room.
+
+As he disappeared Charmian and Alston looked after him. Then Alston came
+nearer to her, and they began to talk in rather low voices.
+
+"The fight is on!"
+
+How Claude hated those words; how he hated the truth which they
+expressed! To-night, in New York, as he went to fetch his overcoat from
+the smart and brilliantly lit bedroom which was opposite to the
+sitting-room across a lobby, he wondered why Fate had led him into this
+situation, why he had been doomed to become a sort of miserable center
+of intrigue, recrimination, discussion, praise, blame, dissension. No
+man, surely, on the face of the earth had loved tranquillity more than
+he had. Few men had more surely possessed it. He had known his soul and
+he had been its faithful guardian once--but long ago, surely centuries
+ago! That he should be the cause of battle, what an irony!
+
+Thinking with great rapidity, during this brief interval of loneliness,
+while he got ready to go out, a rapidity to which his fatigue seemed to
+contribute, giving it wings, Claude reviewed his life since the first
+evening at Elliot's house. Events and periods and details flashed by;
+his close friendship with Mrs. Mansfield (who had refused to come to
+America), his almost inimical acquaintance with Charmian, Mrs.
+Shiffney's capricious endeavors to get hold of him, the firmness of his
+refusals, the voyage to Algiers, his regret at missing the wonders of
+Africa, Charmian's return full of a knowledge he lacked, the dinner
+during which he had looked at her with new eyes.
+
+(He took down from its hook his heavy fur coat bought for the bitter
+winter of New York.)
+
+Chateaubriand's description of Napoleon, the little island in Mrs.
+Grahame's garden, the production of Jacques Sennier's opera--they were
+all linked together closely at this moment in a tenacious mind; with the
+expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by
+night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table,
+the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in
+the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying
+of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the
+earth as the dawn near drew.
+
+Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him
+through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what
+was he hastening?
+
+His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids
+whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of
+the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place,
+Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been
+the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his
+abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of
+his own knowledge of himself.
+
+He saw a gulf black beneath him.
+
+But Charmian called:
+
+"Claude, do make haste!"
+
+He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he
+went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his
+short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter
+dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters,
+its towers--as they had seemed to him then--climbing into Heaven, its
+voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and
+photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes,
+searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's
+small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers,
+conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene
+painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across
+Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by
+grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the
+huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he--he of
+all men!--was expected to fill, a maw gaping for human beings, gaping
+for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the
+first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic
+cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially
+realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles
+of its influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may
+feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over,
+leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into
+the dust.
+
+"Claude!"
+
+"Here I am!"
+
+"What a time you've been! We--are you very tired?"
+
+"Not a bit. Come along!"
+
+They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift,
+shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a
+taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while
+Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.
+
+"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I represent--"
+
+"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."
+
+He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and
+rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left
+where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park
+showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed
+the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty
+air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending
+procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers,
+gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The
+pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and
+walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as
+the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking
+pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat.
+She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In
+an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his
+excitement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and
+her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the
+world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear
+what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the
+lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate
+world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange
+emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination,
+those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely
+evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like
+the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had
+kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated
+from him, as if they thought him a stern, or neglectful father! He shut
+his eyes, and seemed to see once more the smile of the goblin woman, and
+then the fiery gaze of Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"How could she say it? But I don't know that I mind!"
+
+"Minding things doesn't help any in a place like New York."
+
+"But will they believe it?"
+
+"If they do half of them will think you worth while."
+
+"Yes, but the other half?"
+
+"As long as you get there it's all right."
+
+The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.
+
+As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for
+information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear
+them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had
+deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the
+pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and
+envied Alston.
+
+From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came
+carrying some letters.
+
+"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.
+
+"Oh, thank you."
+
+"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix
+them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing
+like that in the Sennier opera."
+
+He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by
+the shoulders and say to him:
+
+"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only
+nodded and remarked:
+
+"All the better for us!"
+
+Then hastily he opened his letters. Three were from autograph hunters,
+and he thrust them into the pocket of his coat. The fourth was from
+Armand Gillier. When Claude saw the name of his collaborator he stood
+still and read the note frowning.
+
+"Letters! Always letters!" said Charmian, coming up. "Anything
+interesting, Claudie?"
+
+"Gillier is coming out after all."
+
+"Armand Gillier!"
+
+"Yes. Or--he arrived to-day, I expect, though this was posted in France.
+What day does the _Philadelphia_--"
+
+"This morning," said Alston.
+
+"Then he's here."
+
+Charmian looked disgusted.
+
+"It's bad taste on his part. After his horrible efforts to ruin the
+opera he ought to have kept away."
+
+"What does it matter?" said Claude.
+
+"He'll be interviewed on the libretto," said Alston. "Gee knows what
+he'll say, the beast!"
+
+"If he backs up Madame Sennier in her libelous remarks it will be
+proclaiming that he can be bribed," exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"I suppose he's bound to throw in his lot with us," added Alston, as
+they came into the huge curving corridor which ran behind the ground
+tier boxes.
+
+"How dark it is! Claudie, give me your hand. It slopes, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes. The entrance is just here."
+
+"How hot your hand is!"
+
+"Here we are!" said Alston.
+
+He pushed a swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly
+lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The
+hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the
+darkness. It was a vast house, and the faint light and the emptiness of
+it made it look even vaster than it was.
+
+"The maw, and I am to fill it!" Claude thought again. And he was
+conscious of unimportance. He even felt as if he had never composed any
+music, as if he knew nothing about composition, had no talent at all. It
+seemed to him incredible that, because of him, of what he had done,
+great sums of money were being spent, small armies of people were at
+work, columns upon columns were being written in myriads of newspapers,
+a man such as Crayford was putting forth all his influence, lavishing
+all his powers of showman, impresario, man of taste, fighting man. He
+remembered the night when Sennier's opera was produced, and it seemed to
+him impossible that such a night could ever come to him, be his night.
+He thought of it somewhat as a man thinks of Death, as his neighbor's
+visitant not as his own.
+
+"Chaw-_lee_!" shouted an imperative voice. "Chaw-ley! Chaw-_lee_!"
+
+"Ah!" cried a thin voice from somewhere behind the stage.
+
+"Get down that light! Give us your ambers! No, not the blues! Your
+ambers! Where's Jimber? I say, where is Jimber?"
+
+Mr. Mulworth, the stage producer, who was the speaker, appeared running
+sidewise down an uncovered avenue between two rows of stalls close to
+the stage. Although a large man, he proceeded with remarkable rapidity.
+Emerging into the open he came upon Claude.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Crayford is here. He wants very much to see you."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Somewhere behind. I think he's viewing camels. Can you come with me?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+He went off quickly with Mr. Mulworth, who shouted:
+
+"I say, where is Jimber?" to some unknown personality as he ran toward a
+door which gave on to the stage.
+
+"Let us go and sit down at the back of the stalls, Alston," said
+Charmian. "They don't seem to be trying the locusts yet."
+
+"No. There are always delays. The patience one needs in a theater! Talk
+of self-control! Here, I'll pull away the--or shall we go to that box?"
+
+"Yes. I'll get on this chair. Help me! That's it."
+
+They sat down in a dark box at the back of the stalls. Far off, across a
+huge space, they saw the immense stage, lit up now by an amber glow
+which came not from the footlights but from above. The stage was set
+with a scene representing an oasis in the desert with yellow sand in the
+distance. Among some tufted palms stood three or four stage hands, pale,
+dusty, in shirt sleeves. At the extreme back of the scene, against the
+horizon, Mr. Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very
+bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards
+behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream
+of amber light.
+
+"It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian.
+"They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a
+success?"
+
+"What! You beginning to doubt!"
+
+"No, no. But when I see this huge dark theater I can't help thinking,
+'Shall we fill it?' What a fight art is! I never realized till now that
+we are on a battlefield. Alston, I feel I would almost rather die than
+fail."
+
+"Fail! But--"
+
+"Or quite rather die."
+
+"In any case it couldn't be your failure."
+
+She turned and looked at him in the heavy dimness.
+
+"Couldn't it?"
+
+"You didn't write the libretto. You didn't compose the music."
+
+"And yet," she said, in a low tense voice, "it would be my failure if
+the opera failed, because but for me it never would have been written,
+never have been produced out here. Alston, it's a great responsibility.
+And I never really understood how great till I saw Claude go across the
+stage just now. He looked so--he looked--"
+
+She broke off.
+
+"Whatever is it, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"He looked like a victim, I thought."
+
+"Everyone does in that light unless--there's Crayford!"
+
+At this moment Mr. Crayford came upon the stage from the side on which
+Claude had just vanished. He had a soft hat on the back of his head, and
+a cigar in his mouth.
+
+"He doesn't!" whispered Charmian.
+
+"Now go ahead!" roared Crayford. "Work your motors and let's see!"
+
+There was a sound like a rushing mighty wind.
+
+At two o'clock in the morning Crayford was still smoking, still
+watching, still shouting. Charmian and Alston were still in the darkness
+of the box, gazing, listening, sometimes talking. They had not seen
+Claude again. If he came into the front of the theater they meant to
+call him. But he did not come. The hours had flown, and now, when Alston
+looked at his watch and told Charmian the time, she could scarcely
+believe him.
+
+"Where can Claude be?"
+
+"I'll go behind."
+
+"Jimber!" roared Mr. Crayford. "Where is Jimber?"
+
+Mr. Mulworth, who looked now as if he had lain awake in his clothes for
+more nights than he cared to remember, rushed upon the stage almost
+fanatically.
+
+"The locusts are all in one corner!" shouted Crayford. "What's the use
+of that? They must spread."
+
+"Spread your locusts!" bawled Mr. Mulworth.
+
+He lifted both his arms in a semaphore movement, which he continued
+until it seemed as if his physical mechanism had escaped from the
+control of his brain.
+
+"Spread your locusts, Jimber!" he wailed. "Spread! Spread! I tell
+you--spread your locusts!"
+
+He vanished, always moving his arms. His voice died away in the further
+regions.
+
+Charmian was alone. She had nodded in reply to Alston's remark. To-night
+she felt rather anxious about Claude. She could not entirely rid her
+mind of the remembrance of him crossing under the light, looking
+unnatural, ghastly, like a persecuted man. And now that she was alone
+she felt as if she were haunted. Eager to be reassured, she fixed her
+eyes on the keen figure, the resolute face, of Mr. Crayford. The power
+of work in Americans was almost astounding, she thought. All the men
+with whom she and Claude had had anything to do seemed to be working all
+the time, unresting as waves driven by a determined wind. Keenness! That
+was the characteristic of this marvellous city, this marvellous land.
+And it had acted upon her almost like electricity. She had felt charged
+with it.
+
+It would be terrible to fail before a nation that worshipped success,
+that looked for it with resolute piercing eyes.
+
+And she recalled her arrival with Claude in the cold light of early
+morning, her first sensation of enchantment when a pressman, with
+searching eyes and a firm mouth turned down at the corners, had come up
+to interview her. At that moment she had felt that she was leaving the
+dulness of the unknown life behind her for ever. It was no doubt a
+terribly vulgar feeling. She had been uneasily conscious of that. But,
+nevertheless, it had grown within her, fostered by events. For
+Crayford's publicity agent had been masterly in his efforts. Charmian
+and Claude had been snapshotted on the deck of the ship by a little army
+of journalists. They had been snapshotted again on the gangplank. In the
+docks they had been interviewed by more than a dozen people. A little
+later, in the afternoon of the same day, they had held a reception of
+pressmen in their sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel. Charmian thought
+of these men now as she waited for Alston's return.
+
+They had been introduced by Mr. Cane, Crayford's publicity agent, and
+had arrived about three o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they
+were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had
+all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had
+put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested,
+sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the
+opera. His song, _Wild Heart of Youth_, had been touched upon, and a
+tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told Charmian
+that he loved it. Then they had discussed music. Claude at first had
+seemed uncomfortable, almost too modest, Charmian had thought. But the
+pressmen had been so agreeable, so unself-conscious, that his discomfort
+had worn off. His natural inclination to please, to give people what
+they seemed to expect of him, had come to his rescue. He had been
+vivacious and even charming. But when the pressmen had gone he had said
+to Charmian:
+
+"Pleasant fellows, weren't they? But their eyes ask one for success.
+Till the opera is out I shall see those eyes, asking, always asking!"
+
+And he had gone out of the room with a gesture suggestive of anxiety,
+almost of fear.
+
+Charmian saw those eyes now as she sat in the box. What Claude had said
+was true. Beneath the sympathy, the charm, the frankness, the readiness
+in welcome of these Americans, there was a silent and strong demand--the
+demand of a powerful, vital country.
+
+"We are here to make you known over immense distances to thousands of
+people!" the eyes of the pressmen had seemed to say. "But--produce the
+goods!" In other words, "Be a success!"
+
+"Be a success! Be a success!" It seemed to Charmian as if all America
+were saying that in her ears unceasingly. "We will be kind to you. We
+will shower good-will upon you. We have hospitable hands, keen brains,
+warm hearts at your service. We only ask to give of our best to you.
+But--be a success! Be a success!"
+
+And the voice grew so strong that at last it seemed almost stern, almost
+fierce in her ears. At last it seemed as if peril would attend upon
+non-compliance with its demand.
+
+She thought of Claude crossing the stage under the amber light, she
+looked into the vast dim theater with its thousands of empty seats, and
+excitement and fear burned in her, mingled together. Then something
+determined in her, the thing perhaps which had enabled her to take
+Claude for her husband, and later to play a part in his art life, rose
+up and drove out the fear. "It is fear which saps the will, fear which
+disintegrates, fear which calls to failure." She was able to say that to
+herself and to cast fear away. And her mind repeated the words she had
+often heard Crayford utter, "It's up to us now to bring the thing off
+and we've just got to bring it off!"
+
+"No, no, I tell you! They're too much on one side of the scene still!
+Who in thunder ever saw locusts swarming in a corner when they've got
+the whole desert to spread themselves in? It aren't their nature. What?
+Well, then, you must alter the position of your motors. Where is
+Jimber?"
+
+And Mr. Crayford strode behind the scenes.
+
+Half-past two in the morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston
+never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She
+buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no
+one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever
+imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like
+desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring
+rather vaguely at the palms and the yellow sands.
+
+After she had sat thus for perhaps some five minutes she saw Claude walk
+hastily on to the stage. He had a large black note-book and a pencil in
+his hand, and seemed in search of someone. Crayford came on brusquely
+from the opposite side of the scene and met him. They began to confer
+together.
+
+The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.
+
+"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."
+
+"What has he been doing all this time?"
+
+"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be
+first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the
+run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's
+out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary
+heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"
+
+"But I don't like to leave Claude."
+
+"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he
+can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."
+
+"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she
+got up to go.
+
+"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted
+everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a
+monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's
+pulling her part to pieces now."
+
+"How did Claude take it?"
+
+"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."
+
+"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home
+without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the
+end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."
+
+"He'll send us away."
+
+"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.
+
+The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford,
+Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the
+stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the
+taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the
+cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel
+Claude asked him to come in.
+
+"I can't go to bed," he said.
+
+"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.
+
+"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the
+question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar,
+and try to quiet down."
+
+"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."
+
+"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."
+
+At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly,
+intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly
+vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were
+dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.
+
+"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I
+think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"
+
+He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of
+champagne, he added:
+
+"I say, let us make a bargain!"
+
+"What is it, old chap?"
+
+"Let us--just us three--have supper together after the first
+performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of
+semi-strangers."
+
+"I'll come! Drink to that night!"
+
+They drank.
+
+Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the
+lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled
+under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them
+the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put
+questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.
+
+Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the
+libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had
+made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a
+bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was
+to sing the big rôle in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as
+an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the
+libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set
+it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful
+temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to
+capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no
+doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers.
+The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to
+muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame
+Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false
+move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.
+
+As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with
+excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before,
+invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when
+he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether
+he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair
+had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had
+seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all
+subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt"
+was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say
+so to Claude. There had been an argument--the theater is the Temple of
+Argument--and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck
+to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now,
+as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did
+it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every deadly sin, were imputed to
+him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his
+brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic?
+What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a
+poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added
+to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it--so long as it was
+a success? The blatant thing--everyone, every circumstance, was urging
+Claude to snatch at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning,
+excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on
+his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and
+crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the
+popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of
+sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to
+be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like
+the clashing of brass instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear
+them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.
+
+One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been
+interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his
+work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct
+statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however,
+had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto,
+which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to
+music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the
+management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally
+remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is
+that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery,
+acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or
+anyone else, says to you."
+
+"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself
+up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.
+
+"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.
+
+"What does it matter?" said Claude.
+
+Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh
+cigar.
+
+"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big,
+resounding success?"
+
+Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half
+congratulatory.
+
+"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of
+success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the
+breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to
+get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've
+simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from
+Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it.
+That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at
+first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep
+himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got
+anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what
+people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses
+of advertisement which has quite enlightened me."
+
+"What did he say?" interjected Alston.
+
+"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let
+them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last
+nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not
+at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys,
+mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up
+to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all
+to--keep my name before the public."'"
+
+Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to
+look grave and excited.
+
+"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the
+man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must
+be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever
+they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and
+sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told
+me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our
+combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new
+libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been
+trying to re-write a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got
+nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did
+work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed
+in the opera, didn't he?"
+
+"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And
+he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music--and he's a man who
+knows."
+
+"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we
+bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."
+
+"Rather! The coming baritone!"
+
+"What a change!"
+
+His eyes shone with excitement.
+
+"I used to be almost afraid of celebrity, I think. But now I want it, I
+need it. America has made me need it."
+
+"This is the country that wakes people up," said Alston.
+
+"It drives me almost mad!" cried Claude, with sudden violence.
+
+"Claudie!" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"It does! There's something here that pumps nervous energy into one
+until one's body and mind seem to be swirling in a mill race. When I
+think of my life in Mullion House and my life here!"
+
+Charmian, with a quick movement, sat upright on the sofa.
+
+"Then you do realize--" she began, almost excitedly. She paused, gazing
+at Claude.
+
+The two men looked at her.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said at length, as she remained silent.
+
+"You do realize that I did see something for you that you hadn't seen
+for yourself, when you shut yourself and your talent in, when you
+wouldn't look at, wouldn't touch the world?"
+
+"Of course. I hadn't courage then. I dreaded contact with life. Now I
+defy life to get the better of me. I know it, and I'm beginning to know
+how to deal with it. I say, let us plan out our campaign if Madame
+Sennier persists in her accusations."
+
+He sat down between them.
+
+"But first tell us exactly what you gave out to the pressmen to-night,"
+said Alston.
+
+They talked till the dawn crept along the sky.
+
+When at last Alston got up to go, Claude said:
+
+"If three strong wills are worth anything we must succeed."
+
+"And we've got Crayford's back of ours," said Alston, putting his arms
+behind him into the sleeves of his coat. "Good-morning! I'm really
+going."
+
+And he went.
+
+Charmian had got up from her sofa, and was standing by the
+writing-table, which was in an angle of the room on the right of the
+window. As Alston went out, her eyes fell on an envelope lying by itself
+a little apart from the letters with which the table was strewn.
+Scarcely thinking about what she was doing she stretched out her hand.
+Her intention was to put the envelope with its fellows. But when she
+took it up she saw that it had not been opened and contained a letter,
+or note, addressed to Claude.
+
+"Why, here's a letter for you, Claudie!" she said, giving it to him.
+
+"Is there? Another autograph hunter, I suppose."
+
+Without glancing at the writing he tore the envelope, took out a letter,
+and began to read it.
+
+"It's from Mrs. Shiffney!" he said. "She arrived to-day on the same ship
+as Gillier."
+
+"I knew she would come!" cried Charmian. "Though they all pretended she
+was going to winter at Cap Martin."
+
+"And she's brought Susan Fleet with her."
+
+"Susan!"
+
+"But read what she says. It seems to have all been quite unexpected, a
+sudden caprice."
+
+"You poor thing!" said Charmian, looking at him with pitiful eyes. "When
+will you begin to understand?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Us."
+
+Claude sent a glance so keen that it was almost like a dart at Charmian.
+But she did not see it for she was reading the letter.
+
+
+                                         "THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL,
+                                                        _Friday._
+
+     "DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've just arrived with Susan Fleet on
+     the _Philadelphia_. I heard such reports of the excitement over
+     your opera out here that I suddenly felt I must run over. After all
+     you told me about it at Constantine I'm naturally interested. Do be
+     nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions
+     of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm
+     really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room
+     for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is.
+     Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your
+     libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such
+     rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you
+     both lunch with us at Sherry's to-morrow at one o'clock? Love to
+     Charmian.--Yours very sincerely,
+                                              ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
+
+
+
+"Well?" said Claude, as Charmian sat without speaking, after she had
+finished the letter. "Shall we go to Sherry's to-morrow?"
+
+He spoke as if he were testing her, but she did not seem to notice it.
+
+"Yes, Claudie, I think we will."
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"What are you thinking?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Do you still believe Mrs. Shiffney tricked me at Constantine?"
+
+"I know she did."
+
+"And yet--"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"We are in the arena!"
+
+"Ah--I understand."
+
+"If we go to Sherry's, and Mrs. Shiffney speaks about coming to a
+rehearsal, what do you mean to do?"
+
+"What do you think about it?"
+
+"Of course she only wants to come in the hope of being able to carry a
+bad report to the Senniers."
+
+Claude was silent for a moment. Then he said:
+
+"That may be. But--we are in the arena."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You dislike Mrs. Shiffney, you distrust her, but you do think she has
+taste, judgment, don't you?"
+
+"Yes--some."
+
+"A great deal?"
+
+"When she isn't biased by personal feeling. But she is biased against
+you."
+
+Claude's eyes had become piercing.
+
+"I think," he said, "that if I were with Mrs. Shiffney at a rehearsal I
+should divine her real, her honest opinion, the opinion one has of a
+thing whether one wishes to have it or not. If _she_ were to admire the
+opera--" He paused. His face looked self-conscious.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I only mean that I think it might be the verdict in advance."
+
+"I see," she said slowly. "Yes, I see."
+
+She got up.
+
+"We simply must go to bed."
+
+"Come along then. But I feel as if I should never want to sleep again."
+
+"We must sleep. The verdict in advance--yes, I see. But Adelaide might
+make a mistake."
+
+"She really has a flair."
+
+"I know. Oh, Claudie, the verdict!"
+
+They were now in their bedroom. Charmian sighed and put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+"The verdict!" she breathed against his cheek softly.
+
+He felt moisture on his cheek. She had pressed wet eyes against it.
+
+"Charmian, what is it? Why--"
+
+"Hush! Just put your arms round me for a minute--yes, like that!
+Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win. Oh, not altogether
+selfishly! I--I am an egoist, I suppose. I do care for my husband to be
+a success. But there's more than that. Yes, yes, there is!"
+
+She held him, with passion, and suddenly kissed his eyes. She was crying
+quite openly now, but not unhappily.
+
+[Illustration: "'CLAUDIE, I WANT YOU TO WIN, I WANT YOU TO WIN!'"--_Page
+378_]
+
+"There's something in you far, far down, that I love," she whispered. "I
+am not always conscious of it, but I am now. It called me to you, I
+believe, at the very first. And I want that to win, I want that to win!"
+
+Claude's face had become set. He bent over Charmian. For a moment he was
+on the verge of a strange confession. But something that still had great
+power held him back from it. And he only said:
+
+"You have worked hard for me. If we do win it will be your victory."
+
+"And if we lose?" she whispered.
+
+"Charmian--" he kissed her. "We must try to sleep."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+On a night of unnatural excitement Claude had come to a crude
+resolution. He kept to it, at first only by a strong effort, during the
+days and the nights which followed, calling upon his will with a
+recklessness he had never known before, a recklessness which made him
+sometimes feel hard and almost brutal. He was "out for" success on the
+large scale, and he was now fiercely determined to win it. Within him
+the real man seemed to recede like a thing sensitive seeking a
+hiding-place. Sometimes, during these strange and crowded days and
+nights, he felt as if he were losing himself in the turmoil around him
+and within him. And the wish came to him to lose himself, and to have
+done for ever with that self which once he had cherished, but which was
+surely of no use, of no value at all, in the violent blustering world.
+
+Now and then he saw the pale shining of the lamp in the quiet studio,
+where he had dwelt with the dear children of his imagination; now and
+then he listened, and seemed to hear the silence there. Then the crowd
+closed about him, the noises of life rushed upon him, and the Claude
+Heath of those far-off days seemed to pass by him fantastically on the
+way to eternal darkness. And, using his will with fury, he cried out to
+the fugitive, "Go! Go!" as to something shameful that must not be seen.
+
+Always he was suffering, as a man only suffers when he tries to do
+violence to himself, when he treats himself as an enemy. But when he had
+time he strove to sneer at his own suffering. Coolness, hardness,
+audacity, these were the qualities needed in life as he knew it now;
+swiftness not sensitiveness, boldness not delicacy. The world was not
+gentle enough for the trembling qualities which vibrate at every touch
+of emotion, giving out subtle music. And he would nevermore wish it
+gentle. Things as they are! Fall down and worship them! Accommodate
+yourself to them lest you be the last of fools!
+
+Claude acted, and carried on by excitement, he acted well. He was helped
+by his natural inclination to meet people half-way when he had to meet
+them. And he was helped, too, by the cordiality, the quickness of
+response, in those about him. Charmian did her part with an energy and
+brilliance to which the apparent change in him gave an impetus. Hitherto
+she had tried to excite in Claude the worldly qualities which she
+supposed to make for success. Now Claude excited them in her. His
+vivacity, his intensity, his power to do varied work, and especially the
+dominating faculty which he now began to display, sometimes almost
+amazed her. She said to herself, "I have never known him till now!" She
+said to Alston Lake, "Isn't it extraordinary how Claude is coming out?"
+And she began to look up to him in a new way, but with the worldly eyes,
+not with the mild or the passionate eyes of the spirit.
+
+Others, too, were impressed by the change in Claude. After the luncheon
+at Sherry's Mrs. Shiffney said, with a sort of reluctance, to Charmian:
+
+"The air of America seems to agree with your composer. Has he been on
+Riverside Drive getting rid of the last traces of the Puritan tradition?
+Or is it the theater which has stirred him up? He's a new man."
+
+"There's a good deal more in Claude than people were inclined to suppose
+in London," said Charmian, trying to speak with light indifference, but
+secretly triumphing.
+
+"Evidently!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Perhaps, now that you've forced him to
+come out into the open, he enjoys being a storm-center, as they call it
+out here."
+
+"Oh, but I didn't force him!"
+
+"Playfully begged him not to come, I meant."
+
+Claude was sitting a little way off talking to Susan Fleet. Mrs.
+Shiffney had "managed" this. She wanted to feel how things were through
+the woman. Then perhaps she would tackle the man. At lunch it had seemed
+to her as if success were in the air. Had she always been mistaken in
+her judgment of Claude Heath! Had Charmian seen more clearly and farther
+than she had? She felt more interested in Charmian than she had ever
+felt before, and disliked her, in consequence, much more than formerly.
+How Charmian would triumph if the Heath opera were a success! How
+unbearable she would be! In fancy Mrs. Shiffney saw Charmian enthroned,
+and "giving herself" a thousand airs. Mrs. Shiffney had never forgiven
+Charmian for taking possession of Claude. She did not hate her for that.
+Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked
+those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as
+the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating
+Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in
+which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she
+wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his
+intensity, his vivacity, his resolution, she was conscious of
+fascination. He puzzled her. "There really is a great deal in him," she
+said to herself. And she wished that some of that "great deal" could be
+hers. As it could not be hers, unless her judgment of a man, not happily
+come to, and now almost angrily accepted, was at fault, she wished to
+punish. She could not help this. But she did not desire to help it.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney separated from the Heaths that day without speaking of the
+"libretto-scandal," as the papers now called the invention of Madame
+Sennier. They parted apparently on cordial terms. And Mrs. Shiffney's
+last words were:
+
+"I'm coming to see you one day in your eyrie at the Saint Regis. I take
+no sides where art is in question, and I want both the operas to be
+brilliant successes."
+
+She had said not a word about the rehearsals at the New Era Opera House.
+
+Charmian was almost disappointed by her silence. She had turned over and
+over in her mind Claude's words about the verdict in advance. She
+continued to dwell upon them mentally after the meeting with Mrs.
+Shiffney. By degrees she became almost obsessed by the idea of Mrs.
+Shiffney as arbiter of Claude's destiny and hers.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's position had always fascinated Charmian, because it was
+the position she would have loved to occupy. Even in her dislike, her
+complete distrust of Mrs. Shiffney, Charmian was attracted by her. Now
+she longed with increasing intensity to use Mrs. Shiffney as a test.
+
+Rehearsals of Claude's opera were being hurried on. Crayford was
+determined to produce his novelty before the Metropolitan crowd produced
+theirs.
+
+"They've fixed the first," he said. "Then it's up to us to be ready by
+the twenty-eighth, and that's all there is to it. We'll get time enough
+to die all right afterward. But there aren't got to be no dying nor
+quitting now. We've fixed the locusts, and now we'll start in to fix all
+the rest of the cut-out."
+
+He had begun to call Claude's opera "the cut-out" because he said it was
+certain to cut out Sennier's work. The rumors about the weakness of
+Sennier's libretto had put the finishing touch to his pride and
+enthusiasm. Thenceforth he set no bounds to his expectations.
+
+"We've got a certainty!" he said. "And they know it."
+
+His energy was volcanic. He knew neither rest nor the desire to rest.
+His season so far had been successful, much more successful than any
+former season of his. He knew that he was making way with the great New
+York public, and he was carried on by the vigor which flames up in a
+strong and determined man who believes himself to be almost within reach
+of the satisfaction of his greatest desire.
+
+Claude, in his new character of the man determined to win a great
+popular triumph, appealed forcibly to Crayford.
+
+"I've made him over!" he exclaimed to Charmian, almost with exultation.
+"He's a man now. When I lit out on him he was--well, well, little lady,
+don't you begin to fire up at me! All I mean is that Claude knows how to
+carry things with him now. Look how he's stood up against all the
+nonsense about the libretto! Why, he's right down enjoyed it. And the
+first night the pressmen started in he was like a man possessed, talked
+about his honor, and all that kind of rubbish. Now he says 'Stir it up!
+It's all for the good of the opera!' Cane's fairly mad about him, says
+he's on the way to be the best boom-center that ever made a publicity
+agent feel young. I'm proud of him! And he's moving all the time. He'll
+get there and no mistake!"
+
+"I always knew Claude would rise to his chance if he got it," she said.
+
+"He's got it now, don't you worry yourself. Not one man in a million has
+such a chance at his age. I tell you, Claude is a made man!"
+
+A made man! Charmian felt a thrill at her heart. But again she longed
+for a verdict from outside, for a verdict from Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+In the midst of the tumult of her life one day, very soon after the
+lunch at Sherry's, she begged Susan Fleet to come to see her. That day
+Claude and she had been with Gillier at the theater. As they had ignored
+Mrs. Shiffney's treachery in the affair of the libretto, so they had
+ignored Gillier's insulting behavior to them at Djenan-el-Maqui. Against
+his will he was with them now in the great enterprise. They had resolved
+to be charming to him, and had taken care to be so. And Gillier,
+delighted with the notoriety that was his, his conceit decked out with
+feathers, met them half-way. He was impressed by the situation which
+Crayford's powerful efforts had created for them. He was moved by the
+marked change in Claude. These people did not seem to him the same
+husband and wife he had known in the hidden Arab house at Mustapha. They
+had gained immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them.
+Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they
+had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is
+following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He
+was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now
+that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else,
+Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian
+he had always been aware of certain faculties which often make for
+success.
+
+On the day when Charmian was expected to see Susan Fleet she had just
+come from an afternoon rehearsal which had gone well. Gillier had been
+almost savagely delighted with the performance of Enid Mardon, who sang
+and acted the rôle of the heroine. He knew little of music, but in the
+scene rehearsed Claude had introduced a clever imitation, if not an
+exact reproduction, of the songs of Said Hitani and his companions.
+This had aroused the enthusiasm of Gillier, who had a curious love of
+the country where he had spent the wild years of his youth. It had been
+evident both to Charmian and to Claude that he began to have great hopes
+of the opera. Charmian had become so exultant on noticing this that she
+had been unable to refrain from saying to Gillier, "Do you begin to
+believe in it?" As she sat now waiting for Susan she remembered his
+answer, "Madame, if the whole opera goes like that scene--well!" He had
+finished with a characteristic gesture, throwing out his strong hands
+and smiling at her. She almost felt as if she liked Gillier. She began
+to find excuses for his former conduct. He was a poor man struggling to
+make his way, terribly anxious to succeed. Madame Sennier had "got at"
+him. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he had wished to associate
+himself with Jacques Sennier. Of course he had had no right to suggest
+the withdrawal of his libretto from Claude. That had been insulting. But
+still--that day Charmian found room in her heart for charity. She had
+not felt so happy, so safe, for a very long time. It was almost as if
+she held success in her hand, as a woman may hold a jewel and say, "It
+is mine!"
+
+A slight buzzing sound told her that there was someone at the outer door
+of the lobby. In a moment Susan walked in, looking as usual temperate,
+kind, and absolutely unconscious of herself. She was warmly wrapped in a
+fur given to her by Mrs. Shiffney. When she had taken it off and sat
+down beside Charmian in the over-heated room, Charmian began at once to
+use her as a receptacle. She proceeded to pour her exultation into
+Susan. The rehearsal had greatly excited her. She was full of the ardent
+impatience of one who had been patient by force of will in defiance of
+natural character, and who now felt that a period was soon to be put to
+her suffering and that she was to enter into her reward. As, long ago,
+in an Algerian garden, she had used Susan, she used her now. And Susan
+sat quietly listening, with her odd eyes dropping in their sockets.
+
+"Oh, Susan, do take off your gloves!" Charmian exclaimed presently. "You
+are going to stay a good while, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, if you like me to."
+
+"I should like to be with you every day for hours. You do me good. We'll
+have tea."
+
+She went to the telephone, came back quickly, sat down again, and
+continued talking enthusiastically. When the tea-table was in front of
+her, and the elderly German waiter had gone, she said:
+
+"Isn't it wonderful? I shall never forget how you spoke of destiny to me
+when we were by the little island. It was then, I think, that I felt it
+was my fate to link myself with Claude, to help him on. Do you remember
+what you said?"
+
+"That perhaps it was designed that you should teach Mr. Heath."
+
+"Don't say mister--on such a day as this!"
+
+"Claude, then."
+
+"And, Susan, I don't want to seem vain, but I have taught him, I have
+taught him to know and rely on himself, to believe in himself, in his
+genius, to dominate. He's marvellously changed. Everyone notices it. You
+do, of course!"
+
+"There is a change. And I remember saying that perhaps it was designed
+that you should learn from him. Do you recollect that?"
+
+Charmian was handing Susan her tea-cup.
+
+"Oh--yes," she said.
+
+She looked at Susan as the latter took the cup with a calm and steady
+hand.
+
+"What excellent tea!" observed Susan.
+
+"Is it? Susan!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I believe you are very reserved."
+
+"No, I don't think so."
+
+"Yes, you keep half your thoughts about things and people entirely to
+yourself."
+
+"I think most of us do that."
+
+"About me, for instance! I've been talking a great deal to you in here.
+And you've been listening, and thinking."
+
+There was an uneasy sound in Charmian's voice.
+
+"Yes. Didn't you wish me to listen?"
+
+"I suppose I did. But you've been thinking. What have you been
+thinking?"
+
+"That it's a long journey up the ray," said Susan, with a sort of gentle
+firmness.
+
+"Ah--the ray! I remember your saying that to me long ago."
+
+"We've got a great deal to learn, I think, as well as to teach."
+
+Charmian was silent for a minute.
+
+"Do you mean that you think I only care to teach, that I--that I am not
+much of a pupil?" she said at length.
+
+"Perhaps that is putting it too strongly. But I believe your husband had
+a great deal to give."
+
+"Claude! Do you? But yes, of course--Susan!" Charmian's voice changed,
+became almost sharply interrogative. "Do you mean that Claude could
+teach me more than I could ever teach him?"
+
+"It is impossible for me to be sure of that."
+
+"Perhaps. But, tell me, do you think it is so?"
+
+"I am inclined to."
+
+Charmian felt as if she flushed. She was conscious of a stir of
+something that was like anger within her. It hurt her very much to think
+that perhaps Susan put Claude higher than her. But she controlled the
+expression of what she felt, and only said, perhaps a little coldly:
+
+"It ought to be so. He is so much cleverer than I am."
+
+"I don't think I mean that. It isn't always cleverness we learn from."
+
+"Goodness then!"
+
+Charmian forced herself to smile.
+
+"Do you think me far below Claude from the moral point of view?" she
+added, with an attempt at laughing lightness.
+
+"It isn't that either. But I think he has let out an anchor which
+reaches bottom, though perhaps at present he isn't aware of it. And I'm
+not sure that you ever have. By the way, I've a message from Adelaide
+for you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"She wants to know how your rehearsals are going."
+
+"Wonderfully well, as I said."
+
+Charmain spoke almost gravely. Her exultant enthusiasm had died away for
+the moment.
+
+"And, if it is allowed, she would like to go to one. Can she?"
+
+Charmian hesitated. But the strong desire for Mrs. Shiffney's verdict
+overcame a certain suddenly born reluctance of which she was aware, and
+she said:
+
+"I should think so. Why not? Even a spy cannot destroy the merit of the
+enemy's work by wishing."
+
+Susan said nothing to this.
+
+"You must come with her if she does come," Charmian added.
+
+She was still feeling hurt. She had looked upon Susan as her very
+special friend. She had let Susan see into her heart. And now she
+realized that Susan had criticized that heart. At that moment Charmian
+was too unreasonable to remember that criticism is often an
+inevitable movement of the mind which does not touch the soul to change
+it. Her attempt at cordiality was, therefore, forced.
+
+"I don't know whether she will want me," said Susan. "But at any rate I
+shall be there for the first night."
+
+"Ah--the first night!" said Charmian.
+
+Again she changed. With the thought of the coming epoch in her life and
+Claude's her vexation died.
+
+"It's coming so near!" she said. "There are moments when I want to rush
+toward it, and others when I wish it were far away. It's terrible when
+so much hangs on one night, just three or four hours of time. One does
+need courage in art. But Claude has found it. Yes, Susan, you are right.
+Claude is finer than I am. He is beginning to dominate me here, as he
+never dominated me before. If he triumphs--and he will, he shall
+triumph!--I believe I shall be quite at his feet."
+
+She laughed, but tears were not far from her eyes. This period she was
+passing through in New York was tearing at her nerves with teeth and
+claws although she scarcely knew it.
+
+Susan, who had seen clearly the hurt she had inflicted, moved, came
+nearer to Charmian, and gently took one of her hands.
+
+"My dear," she said. "Does it matter so much which it is?"
+
+"Matter! Of course it does. Everything hangs upon it--for us, I mean, of
+course. We have given up everything for the opera, altered our lives. It
+is to be the beginning of everything for us."
+
+Susan looked steadily at Charmian with her ugly, beautiful eyes.
+
+"Perhaps it might be that in either case," she said. "Dear Charmian, I
+think preaching is rather odious. I hope I don't often step into the
+pulpit. But we've talked of many things, of things I care for and
+believe in. May I tell you something I think with the whole of my mind,
+and even more than that as it seems to me?"
+
+"Yes. Yes, Susan!"
+
+"I think the success or failure only matters really as it affects
+character, and the relation existing between your soul and your
+husband's. The rest scarcely counts, I think. And so, if I were to pray
+about such a thing as this opera, pray with the impulse of a friend who
+really does care for you, I should pray that your two souls might have
+what they need, what they must be asking for, whether that is a great
+success, or a great failure."
+
+The door opened and Claude came in on the two women.
+
+"Did I hear the word failure?" he said, smiling, as he went up to Susan
+and took her hand. "Charmian, I wonder you allow it to be spoken in our
+sitting-room."
+
+"I--I didn't--we weren't," she almost stammered. But quickly recovering
+herself, she said:
+
+"Susan has come with a message from Adelaide Shiffney."
+
+"You mean about being let in at a rehearsal?"
+
+"Yes," said Susan.
+
+"I've just been with Mrs. Shiffney. She called at the theater after you
+had gone, Charmian. I drove to the Ritz with her and went in."
+
+Charmian looked narrowly at her husband.
+
+"Then of course she spoke about the rehearsal?"
+
+"Yes. Madame Sennier dropped in upon us. What do you think of that?"
+
+Charmian thought that his face and manner were strangely hard.
+
+"Madame Sennier! And did you stay, did you--"
+
+"Of course. I thanked her for giving the opera such a lift with her
+slanders about the libretto. I tackled her. It was the greatest fun. I
+only wish Crayford had been there to hear me."
+
+"How did she take it?" asked Charmian, glancing at Susan, and feeling
+uncomfortable.
+
+"She was furious, I think. I hope so. I meant her to be. But she didn't
+say much, except that the papers were full of lies, and nobody believed
+them except fools. When she was going I gave her a piece of news to
+comfort her."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"That my opera will be produced the night before her husband's."
+
+Susan got up.
+
+"Well, I must go," she said. "I've been here a long time, and daresay
+you both want to rest."
+
+"Rest!" exclaimed Claude. "That's the last thing we want, isn't it,
+Charmian?"
+
+He helped Susan to put on her fur.
+
+"There's another rehearsal to-night after the performance of _Aïda_. You
+see it's a race, and we mean to be in first. I wish you could have seen
+Madame Sennier's face when I told her we should produce on the
+twenty-eighth."
+
+He laughed. But neither Charmian nor Susan laughed with him. As Susan
+was leaving he said:
+
+"You come from the enemy's camp, but you do wish us success, don't you?"
+
+"I have just been telling Charmian what I wish you," answered Susan
+gently, with her straight and quiet look.
+
+"Have you?" He wheeled round to Charmian. "What was it?"
+
+Charmian looked taken aback.
+
+"Oh--what was it?"
+
+"Yes?" said Claude.
+
+"The--the very best! Wasn't it, Susan?"
+
+"Yes. I wished you the very best."
+
+"Capital! Too bad, you are going!"
+
+He went with Susan to the door.
+
+When he came back he said to Charmian:
+
+"Susan Fleet is very quiet, the least obtrusive person I ever met. But
+she's strange. I believe she sees far."
+
+His face and manner had changed. He threw himself down in a chair and
+leaned his head against the back of it.
+
+"I'm going to relax for a minute, Charmian. It's the only way to rest.
+And I shall be up most of the night."
+
+He shut his eyes. His whole body seemed to become loose.
+
+"She sees far, I think," he murmured, scarcely moving his sensitive
+lips.
+
+Charmian sat watching his pale forehead, his white eyelids.
+
+And New York roared outside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+The respective publicity agents of the two opera houses had been so
+energetic in their efforts on behalf of their managements, that, to the
+Senniers, the Heaths, and all those specially interested in the rival
+enterprises, it began to seem as if the whole world hung upon the two
+operas, as if nothing mattered but their success or failure. Charmian
+received all the "cuttings" which dealt with the works and their
+composers, with herself and Madame Sennier, from a newspaper clipping
+bureau. And during these days of furious preparation she read no other
+literature. Whenever she was in the hotel, and not with people, she was
+poring over these articles, or tabulating and arranging them in books.
+The Heaths, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand
+Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath,
+Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph
+Crayford's opinion of Mrs. Charmian Heath, how a clever woman can help
+her husband--was there really anything of importance in this world
+except Charmian and Claude Heath's energy, enterprise, and ultimate
+success?
+
+From the hotel she went to the Opera House. And there she was in the
+midst of a world apart, which seemed to her the whole of the world.
+Everybody whom she met there was concentrated on the opera. She talked
+to orchestral players about the musical effects; to the conductor about
+detail, color, ensemble; to scene-painters about the various "sets,"
+their arrangement, lighting, the gauzes used in them, the properties,
+the back cloths; to machinists about the locusts and other sensations;
+to the singers about their rôles; to dancers about their strange Eastern
+poses; to Fakirs about their serpents and their miracles. She lived in
+the opera, as the opera lived in the vast theater. She was, as it were,
+enclosed in a shell within a shell. New York was the great sea murmuring
+outside. And always it was murmuring of the opera. In consequence of
+Jacob Crayford's great opinion of Charmian she was the spoilt child in
+his theater. Her situation there was delightful. Everybody took his cue
+from Crayford. And Crayford's verdict on Charmian was, "She's a
+wonderful little lady. I know her, and I say she's a peach. Heath did
+the cleverest thing he ever did in his life when he married her."
+
+Charmian really had influence with Crayford, and she used it, revelling
+in a sense of her power and importance. He consulted her about many
+points in the performance. And she spoke her mind with decision, growing
+day by day in self-reliance. In the theater she was generally
+surrounded, and she grew to love it as she had never loved any place
+before. The romance and beauty of Djenan-el-Maqui were as nothing in
+comparison with the fascination of the Monster with the Maw, vast, dark,
+and patient, waiting for its evening provender. To Charmian it seemed
+like a great personality. Often she found herself thinking of it as
+sentient, brooding over the opera, secretly attentive to all that was
+going on in connection with it. She loved its darkness, the ghostly
+lightness of the covers spread over it, the ranges of its gaping boxes,
+the far-off mystery of its galleries receding into a heaven of ebon
+blackness. She wandered about it, sitting first here, then there,
+becoming intimate with the monster on whom she sometimes felt as if her
+life and fortunes depended.
+
+"All this we are doing for you!" something within her seemed to whisper.
+"Will you be satisfied with our efforts? Will you reward us?"
+
+And then, in imagination, she saw the monster changed. No longer it
+brooded, watched, considered, waited. It had sprung into ardent life,
+put off its darkness, wrapped itself in a garment of light.
+
+"You have given me what I needed!" she heard it saying. "Look!"
+
+And she saw the crowd!
+
+Then sometimes she shut her eyes. She wanted to feel the crowd, those
+masses of souls in masses of bodies for which she had done so much.
+Always surely they had been keeping the ring for Claude and for her. And
+it seemed to her that, unseen, they had circled the Isle in the far-off
+Algerian garden where she first spoke of her love and desire for Claude,
+that they had ever since been attending upon her life. Had they not
+muttered about the white house that held the worker? Had they not stared
+at the one who sat waiting by the fountain? Had they not seen the
+arrival of Jacob Crayford? Had they not assisted at those long
+colloquies when the opera which was for them was changed? Absurdly, she
+felt as if they had. And now, very soon, it would be for them to speak.
+And striving to shut her eyes more firmly, or pressing her fingers upon
+them, Charmian saw moving hands, a forest of them below, circles above
+circles of them, and in the distance of the gods a mist of them. And she
+saw the shining of thousands of eyes, in which were mirrored strangely,
+almost mystically, souls that Claude's music, conceived in patience and
+labor, had moved and that wished to tell him so.
+
+She saw the crowd! And she saw it returning to listen again. And she
+remembered, with the extraordinary vitality of an ardent woman, who was
+still little more than a girl, how she had sat opposite to the
+white-faced, red-haired heroine on the first night of Jacques Sennier's
+_Paradis Terrestre_; how she had watched her, imaginatively entered into
+her mind, become one with her. That night Claude had written his letter
+to her, Charmian. The force in her, had entered into him, had inspired
+him to do what he did that night, had inspired him to do what he had
+since done always near to her. And soon, very soon, the white-faced,
+red-haired woman would be watching her.
+
+Then something that was almost like an intoxication of the senses,
+something that, though it was born in the mind, seemed intimately
+physical, came upon, rushed over Charmian. It was the intoxication of an
+acute ambition which believed itself close to fulfilment. Life seemed
+very wonderful to her. Scarcely could she imagine anything more
+wonderful than life holding the gift she asked for, the gift something
+in her demanded. And she connected love with ambition, even with
+notoriety. She conceived of a satisfied ambition drawing two human
+beings together, cementing their hearts together, merging their souls in
+one.
+
+"How I shall love Claude triumphant!" she thought exultantly, even
+passionately, as if she were thinking of a man new made, more lovable by
+a big measure than he had been before. And she saw love triumphant with
+wings of flame mounting into the regions of desire, drawing her soul up.
+
+"Claude's triumph will develop me," she thought. "Through it I shall
+become the utmost of which I am capable. I am one of those women who can
+only thrive in the atmosphere of glory."
+
+Claude triumphant, and made triumphant by her! She cherished that
+imagination. She became possessed by it.
+
+Everything conspired to keep that imagination alive and powerful within
+her. Crayford was an enthusiast for the opera, and infected all those
+who belonged to him, who were connected with his magnificent theater,
+with his own enthusiasm. The scene-painter, who had, almost with genius,
+prepared exquisite Eastern pictures, was an enthusiast foreseeing that
+he would gain in the opera the triumph of his career. The machinist was
+"fairly wild" about the opera. Had he not invented the marvellous locust
+effect, which was to be a new sensation? Mr. Mulworth, by dint of
+working with fury and sitting up all night, had become fanatical about
+the opera. He existed only for it. No thought of any other thing could
+find a resting-place in his mind. His "production" was going to be a
+masterpiece such as had never before been known in the history of the
+stage. Nothing had been forgotten. He had brought the East to New York.
+It was inconceivable by him that New York could reject it. He spoke
+about the music, but he meant his "production." The man was a marvel in
+his own line, and such a worker as can rarely be found anywhere. He
+believed the opera was going to mark an epoch in the history of the
+lyric stage. And he said so, almost wildly, in late hours of the night
+to Charmian.
+
+Then there was Alston, who was to have his first great chance in the
+opera, and who grew more fervently believing with each rehearsal.
+
+The great theater was pervaded by optimism, which flowed from the
+fountain-head of its owner. And this optimism percolated through certain
+sections of society in New York, as had been the case in London before
+Sennier's _Paradis Terrestre_ was given for the first time.
+
+Report of the opera was very good. And with each passing day it became
+better.
+
+Charmian remembered what had happened in London, and thought exultantly,
+"Success is in the air."
+
+It certainly seemed to be so. Rumor was busy and spoke kind things.
+Charmian noticed that the manner of many people toward her and Claude
+was becoming increasingly cordial. The pressmen whom she met gave her
+unmistakable indications that they expected great things of her husband.
+Two of them, musical critics both, came to dine with her and Claude one
+night at the St. Regis, and talked music for hours. One of them had
+lived in Paris, and was steeped in modernity. He was evidently much
+interested in Claude's personality, and after dinner, when they had all
+returned from the restaurant to the Heaths' sitting-room, he said to
+Charmian:
+
+"Your husband is the most interesting English personality I have met. He
+is the only Englishman who has ever given to me the feeling of
+strangeness, of the beyond."
+
+He glanced around with his large Southern eyes and saw that there was a
+piano in the room.
+
+"Would he play to us, do you think?" he said, rather tentatively. "I am
+not asking as a pressman but as a keen musician."
+
+"Claude!" Charmian said. "Mr. Van Brinen asks if you will play us a
+little bit of the opera."
+
+Claude got up.
+
+"Why not?" he said.
+
+He spoke firmly. His manner was self-reliant, almost determined. He went
+to the piano, sat down, and played the scene Gillier had liked so much,
+the scene in which some of Said Hitani's curious songs were reproduced.
+The two journalists were evidently delighted.
+
+"That's new!" said Van Brinen. "Nothing like that has ever been heard
+here before. It brings a breath of the East to Broadway."
+
+Claude had turned half round on the piano stool. His eyes were fixed
+upon Van Brinen. And now Van Brinen looked at him. There was an instant
+of silence. Then Claude swung round again to the piano and began to play
+something that was not out of the opera. Charmian had never heard it
+before. But Mrs. Mansfield had heard it.
+
+     "'I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven
+     angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God
+     upon the earth...."
+
+     "'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became
+     as the blood of a dead man....
+
+     "'The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was
+     given to him to scorch men with fire....
+
+     "'The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river
+     Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
+     Kings of the East might be prepared....
+
+     "'Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and
+     keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.'"
+
+When Claude ceased there was a silence that seemed long. He remained
+sitting with his back to his wife and his guests, his face to the piano.
+At last he got up and turned, and his eyes again sought the face of Van
+Brinen. Then Van Brinen moved, clasped his long and thin hands tightly
+together, and said:
+
+"That's great! That's very great!"
+
+He paused, gazing at Claude.
+
+"That's enormous!" he said. "Do you mean--is that from the opera?"
+
+"Oh, no!" said Claude.
+
+He came to sit down, and began to talk quickly of all sorts of things.
+When the two pressmen were about to go away Van Brinen said:
+
+"I wish you success, Mr. Heath, as I have very seldom wished it for any
+man. For since I have heard some of your music, I feel that you deserve
+it as very few musicians I know anything of do."
+
+Claude's face flushed painfully, became scarlet.
+
+"Thank you very much," he almost muttered. But he wrung Van Brinen's
+thin hand hard, and when he was alone with Charmian he said:
+
+"Of all the men I have met in New York that is the one I like best."
+
+Van Brinen had considerable influence in the musical world of New York,
+and after that evening he used it on Claude's behalf. The members of the
+art circles of the city had Claude's name perpetually upon their lips.
+Articles began to appear which voiced the great expectation musicians
+were beginning to found upon Claude's work. The "boom" grew, and was no
+longer merely sensational, a noisy thing worked up by paid agents.
+
+Charmian became quickly aware of this and exulted. Now and then she
+remembered her conversation with Susan Fleet and had a moment of doubt,
+of wonder. Now and then a fleeting expression in the pale face of her
+husband, a look in his eyes, a sound in his voice, even a movement, sent
+a slight chill through her heart. But these faintly disagreeable
+sensations passed swiftly from her. The whirling round of life took her,
+swept her on. She had scarcely time to think, though she had always time
+to feel intensely.
+
+Often during these days of fierce preparation she was separated from
+Claude. He had innumerable things to do connected with the production.
+Charmian haunted the opera house, but was seldom actually with Claude
+there, though she often saw him on the stage or in the orchestra, heard
+him discussing points concerning his work. And Claude was very often
+away, when rehearsals did not demand his attention, visiting the singers
+who were to appear in the opera, going through their rôles with them,
+trying to imbue them with his exact meaning. Charmian meanwhile was with
+some of the many friends she had made in New York.
+
+Thus it happened that Claude was able to meet Mrs. Shiffney several
+times without Charmian's knowledge.
+
+It was an understood thing--and Charmian knew this--that Mrs. Shiffney
+was to come to the first full rehearsal of the opera. The verdict in
+advance was to be given and taken. Mrs. Shiffney had called once at the
+St. Regis, when Claude was out, and had sat for ten minutes with
+Charmian. And Charmian had called upon her at the Ritz-Carlton and had
+not found her. Here matters had ended in connection with "Adelaide," so
+far as Charmian knew. Mrs. Shiffney had multitudes of friends in New
+York, and was always rushing about. It never occurred to Charmian that
+she had any time to give to Claude, or that Claude had any time to give
+to her. But Mrs. Shiffney always found time to do anything she really
+cared to do. And just now she cared to meet Claude.
+
+Long ago in London, when he was very genuine, she had been attracted by
+him. Now, in New York, when he was dressed up in motley, with painted
+face and eyes that strove, though sometimes in vain, to be false, he
+fascinated her. The new Claude, harder, more dominant, secretly unhappy,
+feverish with a burning excitement of soul and brain, appealed to this
+woman who loved all that was strange, exotic, who hated and despised the
+commonplace, and who lived on excitement.
+
+She threw out one or two lures for Claude, and he, who in London had
+refused her invitations, in New York accepted them. Why did he do this?
+Because he had flung away his real self, because he was secretly angry
+with, hated the self to which he was giving the rein, because he, too,
+during this period was living on excitement, because he longed
+sometimes, with a cruel longing, to raise up a barrier between himself
+and Charmian.
+
+And perhaps there were other reasons that only a physician could have
+explained, reasons connected with tired and irritated nerves, with a
+brain upon which an unnatural strain had been put. The overworked man of
+talent sometimes is confronted with strange figures making strange
+demands upon him. Claude knew these figures now.
+
+He had always been aware of fascination in Mrs. Shiffney. Now he let
+himself go toward this fascination. He had always, too, felt what he had
+called the minotaur-thing in her, the creature with teeth and claws
+fastening upon pleasure. Now he was ready to be with the minotaur-thing.
+For something within him, that was intimately connected with whatever he
+had of genius, murmured incessantly, "To-morrow I die!" And he wanted,
+at any cost, to dull the sound of that voice. Why should not he let his
+monster fasten on pleasure too? The situation was full of a piquancy
+which delighted Mrs. Shiffney. She was "on the other side," and was now
+preparing to make love in the enemy's camp. Nothing pleased her more
+than to mingle art with love, linking the intelligence of her brain with
+the emotion, such as it was, of her thoroughly pagan heart. And the
+feeling that she was a sort of traitress to her beloved Jacques and
+Henriette was quite enchanting. One thing more gave a very feminine zest
+to her pursuit--the thought of Charmian, who knew nothing about it, but
+who, no doubt, would know some day. She rejoiced in intrigue, loved a
+secret that would eventually be hinted at, if not actually told, and
+revelled in proving her power on a man who, in his unknown days, had
+resisted it, and who now that he was on the eve, perhaps, of a wide
+fame, seemed ready to succumb to it. There were even moments when she
+found herself wishing for the success of Claude's opera, despite her
+active dislike of Charmian. It would really be such fun to take Claude
+away from that silly Charmian creature in the very hour of a triumph.
+Yet she did not wish to see Charmian even the neglected wife of a great
+celebrity. Her feelings were rather complex. But she had always been at
+home with complexity.
+
+She managed to get rid of Susan Fleet, by persuading her to visit some
+friends of Susan who lived in Washington. Then it was easy enough to see
+Claude quietly, in her apartment at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and
+elsewhere. Mrs. Shiffney was a past mistress of what she called "playing
+about." Claude recognized this, and had a glimpse into a life strangely
+different from his own, an almost intimate glimpse which both interested
+and disgusted him.
+
+In his determination to grasp at the blatant thing, the big success, a
+determination that pushed him almost inevitably into a certain
+extravagance of conduct, because it was foreign to his innermost nature,
+Claude gave himself to the vulgar vanity of the male. He was out here to
+conquer. Why not conquer Mrs. Shiffney? To do that would be scarcely
+more spurious than to win with a "made over" opera.
+
+He kept secret assignations, which were not openly supposed to be secret
+by either Mrs. Shiffney or himself. For Mrs. Shiffney was leading him
+gently, savoring nuances, while he was feeling blatant, though saved by
+his breeding from showing it. They had some charming, some almost
+exciting talks, full of innuendo, of veiled allusions to personal
+feeling and the human depths. And all this was mingled with art and the
+great life of human ambition. Mrs. Shiffney's attraction to artists was
+a genuine thing in her. She really felt the pull of that which was
+secretly powerful in Claude. And she, not too consciously, made him know
+this. The knowledge drew him toward her.
+
+One day Claude went to see her after a long rehearsal. When he reached
+the hotel it was nearly eight o'clock. The rehearsal of his opera had
+only been stopped because it had been necessary to get ready for the
+evening performance. Claude had promised to dine with Van Brinen that
+night, and Charmian was dining with some friends. But, at the last
+moment, Van Brinen had telephoned to say that he was obliged to go to a
+concert on behalf of his paper. Claude had left the opera house, weary,
+excited, doubtful what to do. If he returned to the St. Regis he would
+be all alone. At that moment he dreaded solitude. After hesitating for a
+moment outside the stage door, he called a taxi-cab, and ordered the man
+to drive to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney would probably be out, would almost certainly have some
+engagement for the evening. The hour was unorthodox for a visit. Claude
+did not care. He had been drowned in his own music for hours. He was in
+a strongly emotional condition, and wanted to do something strange,
+something bizarre.
+
+He sent up his name to Mrs. Shiffney, who was at home. In a few moments
+she sent down to say she would see him in her sitting-room. When Claude
+came into it he found her there in an evening gown.
+
+"Do forgive me! You're going out?" he said.
+
+"Where are you dining?" she answered.
+
+Claude made a vague gesture.
+
+"Have you come to dine with me?" she said, smiling.
+
+"But I see you are going out!"
+
+She shook her powerful head.
+
+"We will dine up here. But I must telephone to a number in Fifth
+Avenue."
+
+She went toward the telephone.
+
+"Oh, but I can't keep you at home. It is too outrageous!" he said.
+
+"Give me time to telephone!" she answered, looking round at him over her
+shoulder.
+
+"You are much too kind!" he said. "I--I looked in to settle about your
+coming to that rehearsal."
+
+She got on to the number in Fifth Avenue and spoke through the telephone
+softly.
+
+"There! That's done! And now help me to order a dinner for--" she
+glanced at him shrewdly--"a tired genius."
+
+Claude smiled. They consulted together, amicably arranging the menu.
+
+The dinner was brought quickly, and they sat down, one on each side of a
+round table decorated with lilies of the valley.
+
+"I'm playing traitress to-night," Mrs. Shiffney said in her deep voice.
+"I was to have been at a dinner arranged for the Senniers by Mrs.
+Algernon Batsford."
+
+"I am so ashamed."
+
+"Or are you a little bit flattered?"
+
+"Both, perhaps."
+
+"A divinely complex condition. Tell me about the rehearsal."
+
+They plunged into a discussion on music. Mrs. Shiffney was a past
+mistress in the art of subtle flattery, when she chose to be. And she
+always chose to be, in the service of her caprices. She understood well
+the vanity of the artistic temperament. She even understood its reverse
+side, which was strongly developed in Claude. Her efforts were dedicated
+to the dual temperament, and beautifully. The discussion was long and
+animated, lasting all through dinner to the time of Turkish coffee.
+Claude forgot his fatigue, and Mrs. Shiffney almost forgot her caprice.
+She became genuinely interested in the discussion merely as a
+discussion. Her sincere passion for art got the upper hand in her. And
+this made her the more delightful. The evening fled and its feet were
+winged.
+
+"I was going to a party at Eve Inness's," she said, when half-past ten
+chimed in the clock on her writing-table. "But I'll give it up."
+
+Claude sprang to his feet.
+
+"Really you must not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount
+of sleep to make up arrears."
+
+"You don't look sleepy."
+
+"How could I, in New York?"
+
+"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite
+definitely given up."
+
+"But--"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he
+remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had
+looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now
+he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he
+felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look
+he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have
+won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels
+it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:
+
+"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The
+two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all
+this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think--" he
+paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.
+But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you
+genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"
+
+After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."
+
+Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked
+absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something
+strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just
+then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or
+desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by
+this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature
+intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her
+either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for
+Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.
+
+"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.
+
+And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature
+deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude
+felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true
+self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish
+pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment
+was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.
+Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was
+certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But
+he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs.
+Shiffney the right to hate him for ever.
+
+"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly
+contemptible. I must slay it!"
+
+Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.
+
+"You are much too kind!" he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
+"I can never be grateful enough to you. If I--if I do succeed, I shall
+know at any rate that one--" He met her eyes and stopped.
+
+"Good-night!" she said. "I'm afraid I must send you away now, for I
+believe I will run in for a minute to Eve Inness, after all."
+
+As Claude descended to the hall he knew that he had left an enemy behind
+him.
+
+But the knowledge which really troubled him was that he deserved to have
+Mrs. Shiffney for an enemy.
+
+His own self, his own manhood, whipped him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+That night, when Claude arrived at the St. Regis, Charmian was still
+out. She did not return till just after midnight. When she came into the
+sitting-room she found Claude in an armchair near the window, which was
+slightly open. He had no book or paper, and seemed to be listening to
+something.
+
+"Claudie! Why, what are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing," he said.
+
+"But the window! Aren't you catching cold?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I believe you were listening to 'New York'!" she continued, taking off
+her cloak.
+
+"I was."
+
+She put her cloak down on the sofa.
+
+"Listening for the verdict?" she said. "Trying to divine what it will
+be?"
+
+"Something like that, perhaps."
+
+"There is still a good deal of the child in you, Claude," she said
+seriously, but fondly too.
+
+"Is there? Too much perhaps," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you feeling depressed?"
+
+She sat down close to him.
+
+"Are you doubtful, anxious to-night?"
+
+"Well, this is rather an anxious time. The strain is strong."
+
+"But you are strong, too!"
+
+"I!" he exclaimed.
+
+And there was in his voice a sound of great bitterness.
+
+"Yes, I think you are. I know you are."
+
+"You have very little reason for knowing such a thing," he answered,
+still with bitterness.
+
+"You mean?"--she was looking at him almost furtively. "Whatever you
+mean," she concluded, "I can't help it! I think you are. Or perhaps I
+really mean that I think you would be."
+
+"Would be! When?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know! In a great moment, a terrible moment perhaps!"
+
+She dropped her eyes, and began slowly to pull off her gloves.
+
+"Talking of the verdict," she said presently, glancing toward the still
+open window, "is the date of the first full rehearsal fixed?"
+
+"Yes. We decided on it this evening at the theater."
+
+"When is it to be?"
+
+"Next Friday night. There's no performance that night. We begin at six.
+I daresay we shall get through about six the next morning."
+
+"Friday! Have you--I mean, are you going to ask Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+During their long and intimate talk at dinner that evening Claude had
+invited Mrs. Shiffney to be present at the rehearsal, and she had
+accepted. Now it suddenly occurred to him that she was his enemy. Would
+she still come after what had occurred just before he left her?
+
+"I have asked her!" he almost blurted out.
+
+"Already! When?"
+
+"I went round to the Ritz-Carlton t-night."
+
+"Was she in?"
+
+"Yes. But she was--but she went out afterward, to Mrs. Inness."
+
+"Oh! And did she accept?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Charmian's eyes were fixed upon Claude. He saw by their expression that
+she suspected something, or that she had divined a secret between him
+and Mrs. Shiffney. She looked suddenly alert, and her lips seemed to
+harden, giving her face a strained and not pleasant expression.
+
+"How is she coming?" she asked.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Yes. Are you going to fetch her? Or am I to?"
+
+"That wasn't decided. Nothing was said about that."
+
+"She can't just walk in alone, without a card to admit her, or anything.
+You know what an autocrat Mr. Crayford is."
+
+"But he knows Mrs. Shiffney. We met him first at her house in London,
+don't you remember?"
+
+"You don't suppose he's going to let everyone he knows into a rehearsal,
+do you?"
+
+Claude got up from his chair.
+
+"No. But--Charmian, I can't think of all these details. I can't--I
+can't!"
+
+There was a sharp edge to his voice.
+
+"I have too much to carry in my mind just now."
+
+"I know," she said, softening. "I didn't mean"--the alert expression,
+which for an instant had vanished, returned to her face--"I only wanted
+to know--"
+
+"Please don't ask me any more! I asked Mrs. Shiffney to come to the
+rehearsal. She said she would. Then we talked of other things."
+
+"Other things! Then you stayed some time?"
+
+"A little while. If she really wishes to be at the rehearsal--"
+
+"But we know she wishes it!"
+
+"Well, then, she will suggest coming with you, or she may write to
+Crayford. I'm not going to do anything more about it."
+
+His face was stern, grim.
+
+"Now I'll shut the window," he added, "or you'll catch cold in that low
+dress."
+
+He was moving to the window when she caught at his hand and detained
+him.
+
+"Would you care if I did? Would you care if I were ill?"
+
+"Of course I should."
+
+"Would you care if I--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence, but still held his hand closely in
+hers. In her hand-grasp Claude felt jealousy, warm, fiery, a thing
+almost strangely vital.
+
+"Does she--is she getting to love me as I wish to be loved?"
+
+The question flashed through his mind. At that moment he was very glad
+that he had never betrayed Charmian, very glad of the Puritan in him
+which perhaps many women would jeer at, did they know of its existence.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "let me shut the window."
+
+"Yes, yes; of course."
+
+She let his hand go.
+
+"It is better not to listen to the voices," she added. "They make one
+feel too much!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Nothing more was said by Charmian or Claude about Mrs. Shiffney and the
+rehearsal. Mrs. Shiffney made no sign. The rehearsals of Jacques
+Sennier's new opera were being pressed forward almost furiously, and no
+doubt she had little free time. Claude wondered very much what she would
+do, debated the question with himself. Surely now she would not wish to
+come to his rehearsal! And even if she did wish to be present, surely
+she would not try to come now! But women are not easily to be read.
+Claude was aware that he could not divine what Mrs. Shiffney would do.
+He thought, however, that it was unlikely she would come. He thought
+also that he wished her not to come.
+
+Nevertheless, when the darkness gathered over New York on Friday
+evening, he found himself wishing strongly, even almost painfully, for
+her verdict.
+
+Charmian was greatly excited. Claude still kept up his successful
+pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to
+conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by
+anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished
+by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching.
+She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering
+moments, not far off, when he had shown a sort of furtive bitterness, or
+weariness, or depression, when she had partially divined a blackness of
+the depths. Now his self-confidence lifted her, and she told him so.
+
+"There's an atmosphere of success round you," she said.
+
+"Why not? We are going to reap the fruits of our labors," he replied.
+
+"But even Alston is terribly nervous to-day."
+
+"Is he? My hand is as steady as a rock."
+
+He held it out, by a fierce effort kept it perfectly still for a moment,
+then let it drop against his side.
+
+The bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock.
+
+"Only an hour and we begin!" said Charmian. "Oh, Claude! This is almost
+worse than the performance."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know. Perhaps because it won't be final. And then they say at
+dress rehearsals things always go badly, and everyone thinks the piece,
+or the opera, is bound to be a failure. I feel wrinkles and gray hairs
+pouring over me in spite of your self-possession. I can't help it!"
+
+She forced a laugh. She was walking about the room.
+
+"I'm devoured by nerves, I suppose!" she exclaimed. "By the way, hasn't
+Mrs. Shiffney written about coming to-night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You haven't seen her again?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"How very odd! Do you suppose she will try to get in?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"But isn't it strange, after her making such a fuss about coming--this
+silence?"
+
+"Probably she's immersed in Sennier's opera and won't bother about
+mine."
+
+"Women always bother."
+
+There was a "b-r-r-r!" in the lobby. Charmian started violently.
+
+"What can that be?"
+
+Claude went to the door, and returned with Armand Gillier.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Gillier!"
+
+Charmian looked at Gillier's large and excited eyes.
+
+"You are coming with us?"
+
+"If you allow me, madame!" said Gillier formally, bowing over her hand.
+"It seems to me that the collaborators should go together."
+
+"Of course. It's still early, but we may as well start. The theater's
+pulling at me--pulling!"
+
+"My wife's quite strung up!" said Claude, smiling.
+
+"And Claude is disgustingly cool!" said Charmian.
+
+Gillier looked hard at Claude, and Charmian thought she detected
+admiration in his eyes.
+
+"Men need to be cool when the critical moment is at hand," he remarked.
+"I learned that long ago in Algeria."
+
+"Then you are not nervous now?"
+
+"Nerves are for women!" he returned.
+
+But the expression in his face belied his words.
+
+"Claude is cooler than he is!" Charmian thought.
+
+She went to put on her hat and her sealskin coat. She longed, yet
+dreaded to start.
+
+When they arrived at the stage-door of the Opera House the dark young
+man came from his office on the right with his hands full of letters,
+and, smiling, distributed them to Charmian, Claude and Gillier.
+
+"It will be a go!" he said, in a clear voice. "Everyone says so. Mr.
+Crayford is up in his office. He wants to see Mr. Heath. There's the
+elevator!"
+
+At this moment the lift appeared, sinking from the upper regions under
+the guidance of a smiling colored man.
+
+"I'll come up with you, Claudie. Are you going on the stage, Monsieur
+Gillier?"
+
+"No, madame, not yet. I must speak to Mademoiselle Mardon about the
+Ouled Naïl scene."
+
+People were hurrying in, looking preoccupied. In a small abode on the
+left, a little way from the outer door, an elderly man in uniform, with
+a square gray beard, sat staring out through a small window, with a
+cautious and important air.
+
+Charmian and Claude stepped into the lift, holding their letters. As
+they shot up they both glanced hastily at the addresses.
+
+"Nothing from Adelaide Shiffney!" said Charmian. "Have you got
+anything?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then she can't be coming."
+
+"It seems not."
+
+"I--then we shan't have the verdict in advance."
+
+The lift stopped, and they got out.
+
+"If we had it would probably have been a wrong one," said Claude. "The
+only real verdict is the one the great public gives."
+
+"Yes, of course. But, still--"
+
+"Hulloh, little lady! So you're sticking to the ship till she's safe in
+port!"
+
+Crayford met them in the doorway of his large and elaborately furnished
+sanctum.
+
+"Come right in! There's a lot to talk about. Shut the door, Harry. Now,
+Mulworth, let's get to business. What is it that is wrong with the music
+to go with the Fakir scene?"
+
+At six o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not
+begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the
+dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And
+from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and
+persistent hammerings.
+
+A very few people were scattered about in the huge space which contained
+the stalls, some nondescript men, whispering to each other, or yawning
+and staring vaguely; and five or six women who looked more alert and
+vivacious. There was no one visible in the shrouded boxes. The lights
+were kept very low.
+
+The sound of hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness
+and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great
+monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign
+lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments,
+and talked together in their sunken habitation.
+
+Seven o'clock struck in the clocks of New York. Just as the chimes died
+away, Mrs. Shiffney drew up at the stage-door in a smart white
+motor-car. She was accompanied by a very tall and big man, with a robust
+air of self-confidence, and a face that was clean-shaven and definitely
+American.
+
+"I don't suppose they've begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked
+slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black
+sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?"
+
+"Here!" said the big man in a big voice.
+
+The dark young man came from his office. On seeing the big man he
+started, and looked impressed.
+
+"Mr. Crayford here?" said the big man.
+
+"I think he's on the stage."
+
+"Could you be good enough to send him in my card? There's some writing
+on the back. And here's a note from this lady."
+
+"Certainly, with pleasure," said the young man, with his cheerful smile.
+"Come right into the office, if you will!"
+
+"Hulloh!" said Crayford, a moment later to Claude. "Here's Mrs. Shiffney
+wants to be let in to the rehearsal! And whom with, d'you think?"
+
+"Whom?" asked Claude quickly. "Not Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Jonson Ramer."
+
+"The financier?"
+
+"Our biggest! My boy, you're booming! Old Jonson Ramer asking to come in
+to our rehearsal! We'll have that all over the States to-morrow morning.
+Where's Cane?"
+
+"I'll fetch him, sir!" said a thin boy standing by.
+
+"Are you going to let them in?"
+
+"Am I going to! Finnigan, go and take the lady and Mr. Ramer to any box
+they like. Ah, Cane! Here's something for you to let yourself out over!"
+
+Mr. Cane read Ramer's card and looked radiant.
+
+"Well, I'm--!"
+
+"I should think you are! Go and spread it. This boy's getting
+compliments enough to turn him silly."
+
+And Crayford clapped Claude almost affectionately on the shoulder.
+
+"Now then, Mulworth!" he roared, with a complete change of manner. "When
+in thunder are we going to have that curtain up?"
+
+Claude turned away. He wished to find Charmian, to tell her that Mrs.
+Shiffney had come and had brought Jonson Ramer with her. But he did not
+know where she was. As he came off the stage into the wings he met
+Alston Lake dressed for his part of an officer of Spahis.
+
+"I say, Claude, have you heard?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Jonson Ramer's here for the rehearsal!"
+
+"I know. Can you tell me where Charmian is?"
+
+"Haven't an idea! There's the prelude beginning! My! Where are my
+formamints?"
+
+Charmian meanwhile had gone into the theater with a dressmaker, who had
+come to see the effect of Enid Mardon's costumes which she had
+"created." Charmian and the dressmaker, a massive and handsome woman,
+were sitting together in the stalls, discussing Enid Mardon's caprices.
+
+"She tore the dress to pieces," said the dressmaker. "She made rags of
+it, and then pinned it together all wrong, and said to me--to
+_me_!--that now it began to look like an Ouled Naïl girl's costume. I
+told her if she liked to face Noo York--"
+
+"H'sh-sh!" whispered Charmian. "There's the prelude beginning at last.
+She's not going to--?"
+
+"No. Of course she had to come back to my original idea!"
+
+And the dressmaker pressed a large handkerchief against her handsome
+nose, savored the last new perfume, and leaned back in her stall
+magisterially with a faint smile.
+
+It was at this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of
+the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat
+she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space
+before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat
+within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat
+back a little farther in the box, and whispered to Mr. Ramer.
+
+"Are you really going to join the Directorate of the Metropolitan?" she
+said.
+
+"I may, when this season's over."
+
+"Does Crayford know it?"
+
+Mr. Ramer shook his massive and important head.
+
+"I'm not certain of it myself," he observed, with a smile.
+
+"And if you do join?"
+
+"If I decide to join"--he glanced round the enormous empty house. "I
+think I should buy Crayford out of here."
+
+"Would he go?"
+
+"I think he might--for a price."
+
+"If this new man turns out to be worth while, I suppose you would take
+him over as one of the--what are they called--one of the assets?"
+
+"Ha!" He leaned toward her, and just touched her arm with one of his
+powerful hands. "You must tell me to-night whether he is going to be
+worth while."
+
+"Won't you know?"
+
+"I might when I got him before a New York audience. But you are more
+likely to know to-night."
+
+"I have got rather a flair, I believe. Now--I'll taste the new work."
+
+She did not speak again, but gave herself up to attention, though her
+mind was often with the woman in the sealskin coat who sat so near to
+her. Had Claude said anything to that woman? There was very little to
+say. But--had he said it? She wondered on what terms Charmian and Claude
+were, whether the Puritan had ever found any passion for the
+Charmian-creature. Claude's music broke in upon her questionings.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had a retentive as well as a swift mind, and she
+remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto.
+In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where
+there is still romance, still strangeness--a land upon which
+civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined
+the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might
+produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were helped by
+powerful music.
+
+Now she listened, waited, remembering her visits to Mullion House, the
+night in the café by the city wall when Said Hitani and his Arabs
+played, the hour of sun in the pine wood above the great ravine, other
+hours in New York. There was something in Heath that she had wanted,
+that she wanted still, though part of her sneered at him, laughed at
+him, had a worldly contempt for him, though another part of her almost
+hated him. She desired a fiasco for him. Nevertheless the art feeling
+within her, and the greedy emotional side of her, demanded the success
+of his effort just now, because she was listening, because she hated to
+be bored, because the libretto was fine. The artistic side of her nature
+was in strong conflict with the capricious and sensual side that
+evening. But she looked--for Jonson Ramer--coolly self-possessed and
+discriminating as she sat very still in the shadow.
+
+"That's a fine voice!" murmured Ramer presently.
+
+Alston Lake was singing.
+
+"Yes. I've heard him in London. But he seems to have come on
+wonderfully."
+
+"It's an operatic voice."
+
+When Alston Lake went off the stage Ramer remarked:
+
+"That's a fellow to watch."
+
+"Crayford's very clever at discovering singers."
+
+"Almost too clever for the Metropolitan, eh?"
+
+"Enid Mardon looks wonderful."
+
+Silence fell upon them again.
+
+The dressmaker had got up from her seat and slipped away into the
+darkness, after examining Enid Mardon's costume for two or three minutes
+through a small but powerful opera-glass. Charmian was now quite alone.
+
+While the massive woman was with her Charmian had been unconscious of
+any agitating, or disturbing influence in her neighborhood. The
+dressmaker had probably a strong personality. Very soon after she had
+gone Charmian began to feel curiously uneasy, despite her intense
+interest in the music, and in all that was happening on the stage. She
+glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
+front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
+places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
+stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
+compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
+felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
+to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
+On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
+at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
+that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
+to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
+occupied.
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"
+
+Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
+he?
+
+Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
+in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
+sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
+while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
+Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
+which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
+anger.
+
+"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
+me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
+not with me."
+
+And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
+out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
+imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
+certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the
+heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
+landmarks.
+
+The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
+Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
+Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
+in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
+the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
+Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
+subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
+moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
+done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.
+
+"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
+exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
+had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
+the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
+at whose feet he was laying his homage.
+
+Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.
+
+She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.
+
+"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
+come!"
+
+But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
+was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
+toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
+she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
+woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
+conversation with another person who was hidden.
+
+Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.
+
+Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
+from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
+blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
+Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
+that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
+one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
+a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
+Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
+knew say:
+
+"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
+to take care of, you must remember."
+
+The words ended in a little laugh.
+
+"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.
+
+For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
+sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
+her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
+slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
+four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
+almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
+abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
+the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
+walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
+again.
+
+"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had
+Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a
+strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She
+did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together
+into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
+"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice
+seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again
+turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly
+this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.
+
+"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.
+
+In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never
+seen before, getting up from a chair.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know--"
+
+"Charmian! Is it you?"
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's voice came from beyond the big man.
+
+"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"
+
+"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath,
+Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute,
+Charmian."
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But
+Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the
+invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.
+
+But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the
+birth of another.
+
+"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak
+carelessly.
+
+Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he
+liked pretty women even more than most men do.
+
+"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can
+judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."
+
+"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she
+wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.
+
+"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. Shiffney. "She will make a
+sensation. And the _mise-en-scène_ is really exquisite, not overloaded.
+Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."
+
+"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the
+music simply because she knows I only care about that."
+
+She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm
+Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.
+
+"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."
+
+Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was
+quite sure of success.
+
+"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said
+Charmian.
+
+"That is a little late. But--"
+
+At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left
+entrance near the stage.
+
+"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. Shiffney, and
+evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"
+
+She was gone.
+
+"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do
+you know, Jonson?"
+
+"Seems to me that little woman's unfashionable--mad about her own
+husband!" said Jonson Ramer.
+
+The curtain went up on the second act.
+
+Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a
+seat at his side and touched his hand.
+
+"Claude, where have you been?"
+
+Her long fingers closed on his hand.
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+His face changed.
+
+"Nothing. It's all going well so far."
+
+"Perfectly. Adelaide Shiffney's here."
+
+"I know."
+
+Charmian's fingers unclasped.
+
+"You've seen her?"
+
+"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."
+
+"Yes. I've--"
+
+They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes
+they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his
+coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously,
+attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with
+their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.
+
+Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide
+Shiffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.
+Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She
+clasped the two arms of her stall.
+
+Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The
+orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the
+watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated
+determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.
+
+"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.
+
+Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance
+and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in
+an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in
+silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long
+colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian
+presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a
+snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
+Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
+breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
+would go badly.
+
+"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
+talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
+gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
+only people--"
+
+Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
+Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and
+caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
+defensive.
+
+"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
+"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
+least."
+
+"Possibly, madame!" he replied.
+
+He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
+eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
+thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
+stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
+not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
+always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
+ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
+with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
+megalomania.
+
+Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
+comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
+nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
+strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
+greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.
+
+The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
+felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
+act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
+creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
+the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
+about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
+picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
+listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
+felt both dull and excited.
+
+"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
+pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."
+
+Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden
+flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to
+writhe with secret irritation.
+
+"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her
+companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."
+
+"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the
+dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since--"
+
+"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."
+
+As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the
+boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the
+financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?
+She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled
+swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have
+gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that
+moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child
+ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.
+Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved
+that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her
+cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected
+the mysterious region from the banality she had left.
+
+But there she was again carried from mood to mood.
+
+She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.
+His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.
+
+"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are
+bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and
+will go down as easily as a--Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors
+right for the locust scene?"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rushing toward the
+wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.
+"_Mister_ Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you
+think?"
+
+"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If they're not
+made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light
+on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think--"
+
+"_Signora--ma si! Ma si!_"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"
+
+Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
+the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
+hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
+pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.
+
+"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
+eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."
+
+"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
+Gillier told me--"
+
+"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
+you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
+the third act?"
+
+"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
+Alston Lake.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."
+
+"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"
+
+"Alston, I must tell you--you're an absolute darling!"
+
+She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.
+
+"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.
+
+Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
+Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
+good things?
+
+Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
+masterpiece.
+
+Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
+being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look
+forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
+at an end."
+
+But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
+an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
+The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
+"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
+was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
+chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
+had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.
+
+"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
+in the morning.
+
+She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
+the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
+lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.
+
+"What does it matter? I don't care!"
+
+The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
+wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss
+Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.
+
+"This," said Charmian to herself, "is my idea of Hell."
+
+She felt that she was being punished for every sin, however tiny, that
+she had ever committed. She longed to creep away and hide. She thought
+of all she had done to bring about the opera, of the flight from
+England, of the life at Djenan-el-Maqui, of the grand hopes that had
+lived in the little white house above the sea.
+
+"Start it again, I tell you!" roared Crayford. "We can't stand here all
+night to hear you talking!"
+
+"Yes," a voice within Charmian said, "this is Hell!"
+
+She bent her head. She felt like one sinking down.
+
+When the act was over she went out at once. She was afraid of Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+The smiling colored man took her up in the elevator to a room where she
+found Claude in his shirt sleeves, with a cup of black coffee beside
+him, working at the score. He looked up.
+
+"Charmian! I've just finished all I can do to-night. What's the time?"
+
+"Nearly two."
+
+"Did the third act go well?"
+
+She looked at his white face and burning eyes.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Sit down. You look tired."
+
+He went on working.
+
+Just as two o'clock struck he finished, and got up from the table over
+which he had been leaning for hours.
+
+"Come along! Let's go down. Oh!"
+
+He stopped, and drank the black coffee.
+
+"By the way," he said, "won't you have some?"
+
+"Yes," she said eagerly.
+
+He rang and ordered some for her. While they were waiting for it she
+said:
+
+"What an experience this is!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How quietly you take it!"
+
+"We're in for it. It would be no use to lose one's head."
+
+"No, of course! But--oh, what a fight it is. I can scarcely believe that
+in a few days it must be over, that we shall _know_!"
+
+"Here's the coffee. Drink it up."
+
+She drank it. They went down in the lift. As they parted--for Claude had
+to go to Meroni--Charmian said:
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney's still here."
+
+"If she stays to the end we must find out what she thinks."
+
+"Or--shall we leave it? After all--"
+
+"No, no! I wish to hear her opinion."
+
+There was a hard dry sound in his voice.
+
+"Very well."
+
+Claude disappeared.
+
+The black coffee which Charmian had drunk excited her. But it helped
+her. As she went back into the theater for the fourth and last act she
+felt suddenly stronger, more hopeful. She was able to say to herself,
+"This is only a rehearsal. Rehearsals always go badly. If they don't
+actors and singers think it a bad sign. Of course the opera cannot sound
+really well when they keep stopping." Another thing helped her now. She
+was joined by Alston Lake who was not on in the last act. He took her to
+a box and they ensconced themselves in it together. Then he produced
+from the capacious pockets of his overcoat a box of delicious sandwiches
+and a small bottle of white wine. The curtain was still down. They had
+time for a gay little supper.
+
+How Charmian enjoyed it and Alston's optimism! The world changed. She
+saw everything in another light. She ate, drank, talked, laughed. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Ramer had vanished from the stalls, but Alston said they
+were still in the theater. They were having supper, too, in one of the
+lobbies. Crayford had just gone to see them.
+
+"And is he satisfied?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He says it's coming out all right."
+
+"But it can't be ready by the date he's fixed for the first night!"
+
+"Yes, it can. It's got to be."
+
+"Well, I don't see how it can be."
+
+"It will be. Crayford has said so. And that settles it."
+
+"What an extraordinary man he is!"
+
+"He's a great man!"
+
+"Alston!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"He wouldn't make a great mistake, would he?"
+
+"A mistake!"
+
+"I mean a huge mistake."
+
+"Not he! There goes the curtain at last."
+
+"And there's Adelaide Shiffney coming in again. She is going to stay to
+the end. If only this act goes well!"
+
+She shut her eyes for a minute and found herself praying. The coffee,
+the little supper had revived her. She felt renewed. All fatigue had
+left her. She was alert, intent, excited, far more self-possessed than
+she had been at any other period of the night. And she felt strongly
+responsive. The power of Gillier's libretto culminated in the last act,
+which was short, fierce, concentrated, and highly dramatic. In it Enid
+Mardon had a big acting chance. She and Gillier had become great allies,
+on account of her admiration of his libretto. Gillier, who had been
+with her many times during the night, now slipped into the front row of
+the stalls to watch his divinity.
+
+"There's Gillier!" whispered Charmian. "He's mad about Miss Mardon."
+
+"She's a great artist."
+
+"I know. But, oh, how I hate her!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+But Charmian would not tell him. And now they gave themselves to the
+last act.
+
+It went splendidly, without a hitch. After the misery of the third act
+this successful conclusion was the more surprising. It swept away all
+Charmian's doubts. She frankly exulted. It even seemed to her that never
+at any time had she felt any doubts about the fate of the opera. From
+the first its triumph had been a foregone conclusion. From the abysses
+she floated up to the peaks and far above them.
+
+"Oh, Alston, it's too wonderful!" she exclaimed. "If only there were
+someone to applaud!"
+
+"There'll be a crowd in a few days."
+
+"How glorious! How I long to see them, the dear thousands shouting for
+Claude. I must go to Adelaide Shiffney. I must catch her before she
+goes. There can't be two opinions. An act like that is irresistible.
+Oh!"
+
+She almost rushed out of the box.
+
+In the stalls she came upon Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer who were
+standing up ready to go. A noise of departure came up from the hidden
+orchestra. Voices were shouting behind the scenes. In a moment the
+atmosphere of the vast theater seemed to have entirely changed. Night
+and the deadness of slumber seemed falling softly, yet heavily, about
+it. The musicians were putting their instruments into cases and bags. A
+black cat stole furtively unseen along a row of stalls, heading away
+from Charmian.
+
+"So you actually stayed to the end!" Charmian said.
+
+Her eyes were fastened on Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"Oh, yes. We couldn't tear ourselves away, could we, Mr. Ramer?"
+
+"No, indeed!"
+
+"The last act is the best of all," Mrs. Shiffney said.
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" said Charmian.
+
+There was a slight pause. Then Ramer said:
+
+"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband
+unfortunately, but--"
+
+"Here he is!" said Charmian.
+
+At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought,
+unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much
+drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.
+
+"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to
+Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did
+it?"
+
+"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."
+
+She introduced the two men to one another.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work--most
+interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and
+glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile.
+"And how admirably put on!"
+
+He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.
+
+"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.
+
+And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in
+the opera with a great deal of deftness.
+
+"As to Alston Lake, he quite astonished us!" she said presently. "He is
+going to be a huge success."
+
+She discussed the singers, showing her usual half-slipshod
+discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness.
+
+"Altogether," she concluded, "it has been a most interesting and unusual
+evening. Ah, there is Monsieur Gillier!"
+
+Gillier came up and received congratulations. His expression was very
+strange. It seemed to combine something that was morose with a sort of
+exultation. Once he shot a half savage glance at Claude. He raved about
+Enid Mardon.
+
+"We are going round to see her!" Mrs. Shiffney said. "Come, Mr. Ramer!"
+
+Quickly she wished Charmian and Claude good-night.
+
+"All my congratulations!" she said. "And a thousand wishes for a triumph
+on the first night. By the way, will it really be on the twenty-eighth,
+do you think?"
+
+"I believe so," said Claude.
+
+"Can it be ready?"
+
+"We mean to try."
+
+"Ah, you are workers! And Mr. Crayford's a wonder. Good-night, dear
+Charmian! What a night for you!"
+
+She buttoned her sable coat at the neck and went away with Ramer and
+Armand Gillier.
+
+As she turned to the right in the corridor she murmured to Gillier:
+
+"Why didn't you give it to Jacques? Oh, the pity of it!"
+
+Claude and Charmian said scarcely anything as they drove to their hotel.
+Charmian lay back in the taxi-cab with shut eyes, her temples throbbing.
+But when they were in their sitting-room she came close to her husband,
+and said:
+
+"Claude, I want to ask you something."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Have you had a quarrel with Adelaide Shiffney?"
+
+Claude hesitated.
+
+"A quarrel?"
+
+"Yes. Have you given her any reason--just lately--to dislike you
+personally, to hate you perhaps?"
+
+"What should make you think so?"
+
+"Please answer me!" Her voice had grown sharp.
+
+"Perhaps I have. But please don't ask me anything more, Charmian. If you
+do, I cannot answer you."
+
+"Now I understand!" she exclaimed, almost passionately.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why she turned down her thumb at the opera."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Claude, she did, she did! You know she did! There was not one real word
+for you from either her or Mr. Ramer, not one! We've had her verdict.
+But what is it worth? Nothing! Less than nothing! You've told me why.
+All her cleverness, all her discrimination has failed her, just
+because--oh, we women are contemptible sometimes! It's no use our
+pretending we aren't. Claude, I'm glad--I'm thankful you've made her
+hate you. And I know how!"
+
+"Hush! Don't let us talk about it."
+
+"Poor Adelaide! How mad she will be on the twenty-eighth when she hears
+how the public take it!"
+
+Claude only said:
+
+"If we are ready."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Jacob Crayford was not the man to be beaten when he had set his heart
+on, put his hand to, any enterprise. On the day he had fixed upon for
+the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At
+the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every
+stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford
+to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its
+work, the singers were "at home" in their parts. How it had all been
+accomplished in the short time Charmian did not understand. It seemed to
+her almost as if she had assisted at the accomplishment of the
+incredible, as if she had seen a miracle happen. She was obliged to
+believe in it after the final rehearsal, which was, so Crayford, Mr.
+Mulworth, Meroni, and it was even rumored Jimber declared, the most
+perfect rehearsal they had ever been present at.
+
+"Exactly three hours and a half!" Crayford had remarked when the curtain
+came down on the fourth act. "So we come ahead of the Metropolitan. I've
+just heard they've had a set back with Sennier's opera; can't produce
+for nearly a week after the date they'd settled. We needn't have been in
+such a devil of a hurry after all. But we've got the laugh on them now.
+Sennier's first opera was a white man. No doubt about that. But the
+hoodoo seems out against this one. I tell you"--he had swung round to
+Claude, who had just come upon the stage--"I'd rather have this opera of
+yours than Sennier's, although he's known all over creation and you're
+nothing but a boom-boy up to now. I used to believe in names, but upon
+my word seems to me the public's changing. Give 'em the goods and they
+don't care where they come from."
+
+His eyes twinkled as he added, clapping Claude on the shoulder:
+
+"All very well for you now, my boy! But you'll wish it was the other
+way, p'raps, when you come round to the stage door with your next opera
+on offer!"
+
+He was in grand spirits. He had "licked" the Metropolitan to a "frazzle"
+over the date of production, and he was going to "lick them to a
+frazzle" with the production. Every reserved seat in the house was sold
+for Claude's first night. Crayford stepped on air.
+
+In the afternoon of the day of production, when Charmian and Claude,
+shut up in their apartment at the St. Regis, and denied to all visitors,
+were trying to rest, and were pretending to be quite calm, a note was
+brought in from Mrs. Shiffney. It was addressed to Charmian, and
+contained a folded slip of green paper, which fell to the ground as she
+opened the note. Claude picked it up.
+
+"What is it?" said Charmian.
+
+"A box ticket for the Metropolitan. It must be for Sennier's first
+night, I suppose."
+
+"It is!" said Charmian, who had looked at the note.
+
+In a moment she gave it to Claude without comment.
+
+
+                                              RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL.
+                                                      _Feb. 28th_
+
+     "DEAR CHARMIAN,--Only a word to wish you and your genius a
+     gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even
+     Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this
+     occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all
+     coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our
+     best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have
+     a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble
+     friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers.
+     Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your
+     genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for
+     Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date,
+     has had to be postponed for four days--something wrong with the
+     scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a
+     triumph.
+
+     "Hopes and prayers for the genius.--Yours ever sincerely,
+
+                                             "ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
+
+     "Susan sends her love--not the universal brand."
+
+Claude read the note, and kept it for a moment in his hand. He was
+looking at it, but he knew Charmian's eyes were on him, he knew she was
+silently asking him to tell her all that had happened between Mrs.
+Shiffney and him. And he realized that her curiosity was the offspring
+of a jealousy which she probably wished to conceal, but which she
+suffered under even on such a day of anxiety and anticipation as this.
+
+"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box
+ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to
+hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours."
+
+"To yours!"
+
+"Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis.
+
+Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs.
+Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer
+softly. It clicked as it shut. She sighed. Something in the note they
+had just read made her feel apprehensive. It was almost as if it had
+given out a subtle exhalation which had affected her physically.
+
+"Claudie!" she said, turning round. "I would give almost anything to be
+like Susan to-day."
+
+"Would you? But why?"
+
+"She would be able to take it all calmly. She would be able to say to
+herself--'all this is passing, a moment in eternity, whichever way
+things go my soul will remain unaffected'--something like that. And it
+would really be so with Susan."
+
+"She certainly carries with her a great calmness."
+
+Charmian gazed at him.
+
+"You are wonderful to-day, too."
+
+Claude had kept up to this moment his dominating, almost bold air of a
+conqueror of circumstances, the armor which he had put on as a dress
+suitable to New York.
+
+"But in quite a different way," she added. "Susan never defies."
+
+Claude was startled by her shrewdness but avoided comment on it.
+
+"Madre must be thinking of us to-day," he said.
+
+"Yes. I thought--I almost expected she would send us a cablegram."
+
+"It may come yet. There's plenty of time."
+
+Charmian looked at the clock.
+
+"Only four hours before the curtain goes up."
+
+"Or we may find one for us at the theater."
+
+"Somehow I don't think Madre would send it there."
+
+She went to sit down on the sofa, putting cushions behind her with
+nervous hands, leaned back, leaned forward, moved the cushions, again
+leaned back.
+
+"I almost wish we'd asked Alston to come in to-day," she said.
+
+"But he's resting."
+
+"I know. But he would have come. He could have rested here with us."
+
+"Better for him to keep his voice perfectly quiet. To-night is his
+début. He has got to pay back over three years to Crayford with his
+performance to-night. And we shall have him with us at supper."
+
+Charmian moved again, pushed the cushions away from her.
+
+"Yes, I've ordered it, a wonderful supper, all the things you and Alston
+like best."
+
+"We'll enjoy it."
+
+"Won't we? You sent Miss Mardon the flowers?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The telephone sounded.
+
+"It is Miss Mardon," Claude said, as he listened. "She's thanking me for
+the flowers."
+
+"Give her my love and best wishes for to-night."
+
+Claude obeyed, and added his own in a firm and cheerful voice.
+
+"She's resting, of course," said Charmian.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Everyone resting. It seems almost ghastly."
+
+"Why?" he said, laughing.
+
+"Oh, I don't know--death-like. I'm stupid to-day."
+
+She longed to say, "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by
+the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution at the last moment, show the
+white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been
+such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who have made this day
+possible!"
+
+"It's only the physical reaction," she added hastily. "After all we've
+gone through."
+
+"Oh, we mustn't give way to reaction yet. We've got the big thing in
+front of us. All the rest is nothing in comparison with to-night."
+
+"I know! I hope Madre will cable. If she doesn't, it will seem like a
+bad omen. I shall feel as if she didn't care what happens."
+
+He said nothing.
+
+"Won't you?" she asked.
+
+"I think she will cable. But even if she doesn't, I know she always
+cares very much what happens to you and me. Nothing would ever make me
+doubt that."
+
+"No, of course not. But I do want her to show it, to prove it to us
+to-day. It is such a day in our lives! Never, so long as we live, can we
+have such another day. It is the day I dreamed of, the day I foresaw,
+that night at Covent Garden."
+
+She felt a longing, which she checked, to add, "It is the day I decreed
+when I looked at Henriette Sennier!" But though she checked the longing,
+its birth had brought to her hope. She, a girl, had decreed this day and
+her decree had been obeyed. Her will had been exerted, and her will had
+triumphed. Nothing could break down that fact. Nothing could ever take
+from her the glory of that achievement. And it seemed to point to the
+ultimate glory for which she had been living so long, for which she had
+endured so patiently. Suddenly her restlessness increased, but it was no
+longer merely the restlessness of unquiet nerves. Anticipation whipped
+her to movement, and she sprang up abruptly from the sofa.
+
+"Claude, I can't stay in here! I can't rest. Don't ask me to. Anything
+else, but not that!"
+
+She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"Be a dear! Take me out!"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Anywhere! Fifth Avenue, Central Park! Let us walk! I know! Let us walk
+across the park and look at the theater, our theater. A walk will do me
+more good than you can dream of, genius though you are. And the time
+will pass quickly. I want it to fly. I want it to be night. I want to
+see the crowd. I want to hear it. How can we sit here in this hot red
+room waiting? Take me out!"
+
+Claude was glad to obey her. They wrapped themselves up, for it was a
+bitter day, and went down to the hall. As they passed the bureau the
+well-dressed, smooth-faced men behind the broad barrier looked at them
+with a certain interest and smiled. Charmian glanced round gaily and
+nodded to them.
+
+"I am sure they are all wishing us well!" she said to Claude. "I quite
+love Americans."
+
+"A taxi, sir?" asked a big man in uniform outside.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+They went to the left and turned into Fifth Avenue.
+
+How it roared that day! An endless river of motor-cars poured down it.
+Pedestrians thronged the pavements, hurrying by vivaciously, brimming
+with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there.
+For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great
+vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America.
+Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought:
+
+"What a world it is to conquer!"
+
+"Isn't it splendid out here!" she said. "What an almost maddening whirl
+of life. Faces, faces, faces, and brains and souls behind them. I love
+to see all these faces to-day. I feel the brains and the souls are
+wanting something that you are going to give them."
+
+"Let us hope one or two out of the multitude may be!"
+
+"One or two! Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself
+unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box
+is taken, every single one! Think of that--and all because of what you
+have done. Are we going to Central Park?"
+
+"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue."
+
+"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the
+edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city
+like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living
+creature had quicksilver in his veins--or her veins. For I never saw
+such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you
+conquer these wonderful women!"
+
+Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.
+
+"New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed.
+
+"How are you going to do without it?"
+
+"When we go?"
+
+"Yes, when we go home?"
+
+"Home? But where is our home?"
+
+"In Kensington Square, I suppose."
+
+"I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again.
+That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we
+really meant to do."
+
+"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"
+
+"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt
+there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."
+
+She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that
+just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.
+
+"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the
+ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"
+
+"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."
+
+They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed
+movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray
+squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in
+front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air
+of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if
+it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe,
+whatever others might think.
+
+"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.
+
+"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are
+going to be."
+
+"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."
+
+He quoted Dante:
+
+"_Quanto la cosa è più perfetta, più senta il bene, e così la
+doglienza._"
+
+"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she
+said. "Do you?"
+
+"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.
+
+And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.
+
+"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had
+walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close
+to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite
+side of the way."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of
+their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it.
+Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of
+one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity
+they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly
+lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the
+motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the
+monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And
+out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a judge, or
+judges, prepared to join in the great decision by which was to be
+decided a fate. Both Claude and Charmian were thinking of this as they
+stood together, while the darkness gathered about them and the cold wind
+eddied by. And Charmian longed passionately to have the power to
+hypnotize all those brains into thinking Claude's work wonderful, all
+those hearts into loving it. For a moment the thought of the human
+being's independence almost appalled her.
+
+"It looks cold and almost dead now," she murmured. "How different it
+will look in a few hours!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the
+sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the
+passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even
+herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself,
+but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of
+human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude
+almost startled her.
+
+"What is it?" she said.
+
+She looked up at him quickly.
+
+"What's the matter, Claude?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come
+along."
+
+And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to
+walk quickly.
+
+He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the
+colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on
+the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the
+rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to
+gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick
+lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning
+to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the
+Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding
+galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded,
+alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors
+and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed
+women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical
+critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical
+season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the
+libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's
+prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.
+
+Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had
+impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.
+The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be
+trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won
+entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men
+instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood
+side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics
+and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only
+he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of
+his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known
+too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.
+America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out
+of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with
+it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift
+their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of
+the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries,
+the tinkling stream voices of the oases.
+
+Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew anticipation
+to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to
+America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.
+
+The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.
+
+Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his
+rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white
+flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to
+him and gently took him by the arm.
+
+"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"
+
+"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."
+
+"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on
+him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"
+
+And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed
+themselves on the critic's face.
+
+"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."
+
+"Bits of the opera?"
+
+"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me
+enormously--almost terrible music."
+
+"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord
+we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me
+get in front?"
+
+In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with
+Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next
+door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer
+and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many
+friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a
+gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid
+Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands
+he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the
+programme with almost greedy eyes.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box
+to box. She took up her opera glasses.
+
+"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you
+see them?"
+
+Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.
+
+"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps
+they are too nervous to come."
+
+Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.
+
+"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great
+night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney leaned round to the next box.
+
+"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"
+
+"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just
+coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."
+
+"Where? Where?"
+
+"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale
+green."
+
+"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's
+wife?"
+
+He put up his glasses.
+
+"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She drew back into her box.
+
+"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting
+behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."
+
+Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her
+across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this
+hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.
+
+Jacques Sennier began to chatter.
+
+At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.
+
+Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside
+hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before
+she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come
+a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best
+to-night love. Madre."
+
+Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she
+saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.
+
+"What's that?" she said.
+
+"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so
+I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied
+that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's
+roses."
+
+Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had
+turned out the electric burner.
+
+"It's strange to think of Madre in Berkeley Square to-night," said
+Charmian slowly. "I wonder what she is doing."
+
+"I am quite sure she is alone, up in her reading-room thinking of us, in
+one of her white dresses."
+
+"And wishing us--" she paused.
+
+The first notes of the Prelude sounded in the hidden orchestra.
+
+Claude fixed his mind on the thought of Madre, in a white dress, sitting
+alone in the well-known quiet room, thinking of him--in that moment he
+was an egoist--wishing him the best. He could almost see Madre's face
+rise up before him, as it must have looked when she wrote that
+cablegram, a face kind, intense, with fire, sorrow, and love in the
+burning eyes. And the thought of that face helped him very much just
+then, more than he would have thought it possible that anything could
+help him, was a firm and a tender friend to him in a difficult crisis of
+his life.
+
+He sat back in the shadow behind Charmian in a sort of strange
+loneliness, conscious of the enormous crowd around him. He could not see
+the members of this crowd. He saw only Charmian in her pale green gown,
+with a touch of green in her cloud of dark hair, and a long way off the
+stage. He heard perpetually his own music. But to-night it did not seem
+to him to be his own. He listened to it with a kind of dreadful and
+supreme detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him. But he listened
+with great intensity, with all his critical intelligence at work, and
+with--so at least it seemed to him--his heart prepared to be touched,
+moved. It was not a hard heart which was beating that night in the
+breast of Claude, nor was it the foolish, emotional heart of the
+partisan, lost to the touch of reason, to the influence of the deepest
+truth which a man of any genius dare not deny. No critic in the vast
+theater that night listened to Claude's opera more dispassionately than
+did Claude himself. Sometimes he thought of the colored woman in the
+huge pink hat. He knew she was somewhere in the theater, probably far up
+in that dim gallery toward which he had looked at rehearsal, when the
+building had presented itself to his imagination as a monster waiting
+heavily to be fed. On this one night at least he had fed it full. Was
+not _she_ stretching her great lips in a smile?
+
+Sometimes Claude heard faint movements, slight coughing, little sounds
+like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause.
+Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off
+his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with
+cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming!
+Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence of an
+attentive crowd fell again, like some vast veil falling, and Claude
+attended intensely to the music as if it were the music of another.
+
+After the first act there was more applause, which sounded in their box
+rather strong in patches but scattered. The singers were called three
+times, but always in this unconcentrated way.
+
+"It's going splendidly. They like it!" said Charmian quickly. "Three
+calls. That's unusual after a first act, when the audience hasn't warmed
+up. Isn't it odd, Claudie, that Americans always applaud quite
+differently from the way the English do? They always applaud like that."
+
+She had turned right round and was almost facing him.
+
+"How do you mean?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you notice? Persistently, but in clumps as it were. It is by
+their persistence they show how pleased they are, rather than by
+their--their--I hardly know just how to put it."
+
+"By their unanimity perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no! Not exactly that! Here's Mr. Crayford."
+
+Crayford slipped in, but only stayed for a moment.
+
+"Hear that applause?" he said. "They're mad about it. Alston's got them.
+I knew he would. That boy's going to be famous. But wait till the
+second act. They're in a fine humor, only asking to be pleased. I know
+the signs. The libretto's hit them hard. They're all asking what's to
+happen next."
+
+"You're satisfied then?" said Charmian.
+
+"Satisfied! I'm so happy I don't know what to do."
+
+He was gone.
+
+"He knows!" Charmian said.
+
+Her eyes were fixed upon Claude. They looked almost defiant.
+
+"If anyone in America knows what he is talking about I suppose it is Mr.
+Crayford," she added.
+
+There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American
+friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was
+going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"--all the
+proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on
+such occasions. One of them was an acquaintance of Van Brinen's. Claude
+asked him if Van Brinen were in the house. He said yes. Claude then
+inquired whether Van Brinen knew the number of his box, and was told
+that he did know it. The conversation turned to other topics, but when
+the two men had gone out Charmian said:
+
+"Why did you ask those questions about Mr. Van Brinen, Claudie?"
+
+"Only because I thought if he knew where our box was he might pay us a
+visit. No one has been more friendly with us than he has."
+
+"I see. He's certain to come after the next act. Ah! the lights are
+going down."
+
+She had been standing for a few minutes. Now she moved to sit down.
+Before doing so she drew her chair a little way back in the box.
+
+"I don't want to be distracted from the stage--my attention, I mean--by
+seeing too many people," she whispered, in explanation of her action.
+"You are quite right to keep at the back. One can listen much better if
+one doesn't see too much of the audience."
+
+Claude said nothing. The curtains were parting.
+
+The second act was listened to by the vast audience in a silence that
+was almost complete.
+
+Now and then Charmian whispered a word or two to Claude. Once she said:
+
+"Isn't it wonderful, the silence of a crowd? Doesn't it show how
+absorbed they are?"
+
+And again:
+
+"I think it's such a mercy that modern methods of composition give no
+opportunity to the audience to break in with applause. Any interruption
+would ruin the effect of the act as a whole."
+
+Claude just moved his head in reply.
+
+Everything was satisfactory. Jacob Crayford had been right. The opera
+was ready for production and was "going" without a hitch. The elaborate
+scenic effects were working perfectly. Miss Mardon had never been more
+admirable, more completely mistress of her art. Nor had she ever looked
+more wonderful. Alston Lake's success was assured. His voice filled the
+great house without difficulty. Even Charmian and Claude were surprised
+by its volume and beauty.
+
+"Isn't Alston splendid?" whispered Charmian once.
+
+"Yes," Claude replied.
+
+He added, after a pause:
+
+"Dear old Alston is safe."
+
+Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather
+restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it.
+Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again,
+opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience
+almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to
+frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did
+not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her
+as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed
+herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see
+the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her
+box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to
+be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the
+curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience on the
+stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost
+strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the
+act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often
+leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What
+were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the
+libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after
+the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure
+that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was
+sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her
+trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was
+saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices
+for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.
+
+The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had
+heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed
+by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement,
+when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her
+favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the
+opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging
+at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the
+rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.
+
+Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken
+it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This
+is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And
+presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:
+
+"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me.
+For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my
+thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me
+and I am the ocean."
+
+Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the
+audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her
+independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a
+nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness
+devised by Crayford. And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength,
+like an adversary braced up by conflict.
+
+Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She
+strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in
+such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!
+
+It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth.
+It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were
+three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and
+conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up
+from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.
+
+"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.
+
+"Can you? Where is he?"
+
+Claude got up slowly, picked up the roses and the cablegram from the
+chair beside Charmian, put them behind him, and took the chair, bringing
+it forward quite to the front of the box. As he did so Charmian made a
+sound like a word half-uttered and checked.
+
+"Where is he?" Claude repeated.
+
+Many people in the stalls were looking at him, were pointing him out. He
+seemed to ignore the attention fixed upon him.
+
+"There!" said Charmian, in a low voice.
+
+She pointed with her fan, then leaned back.
+
+Claude looked and saw Van Brinen not far off. He was standing up in the
+stalls, facing the boxes, bending a little and talking to two smartly
+dressed women. His pale face looked sad. Presently he stood up straight
+and seemed to look across the intervening heads into Claude's eyes.
+
+"He must see me!" Claude thought. "He does see me!"
+
+Van Brinen stood thus for quite a minute. Then he made his way to one of
+the exits and disappeared.
+
+"He is coming round to the box, I'm sure," said Charmian cheerfully. "He
+evidently saw us."
+
+"Yes."
+
+But Van Brinen did not come. Nor did Jacob Crayford. Several others
+came, however, and there were comments, congratulations. The same things
+were repeated by several mouths with strangely similar intonations. And
+Charmian made appropriate answers. And all the time she kept on saying
+to herself: "This is my hour of triumph, as Madame Sennier's was at
+Covent Garden. Only this is America and not England. So of course there
+is a difference. New York has its way of setting the seal on a triumph
+and London has its way."
+
+Moved presently to speak out of her mind she said to a Boston man,
+called Hostatter, who had looked in upon them:
+
+"It is so interesting, I think, to notice the difference between one
+nation and another in such a matter for instance as this receiving of a
+new work."
+
+"Very interesting, very interesting," said Hostatter.
+
+"You Americans show what you feel by the intensity of your si--by the
+intensity, the concentration with which you listen."
+
+"Exactly. And what is a London audience like? I have never been to a
+London première."
+
+"Oh, more--more boisterous and less intense. Isn't it so, Claude?"
+
+"No doubt there's a difference," said Claude.
+
+"Do you mean they are boisterous at Covent Garden?" said Hostatter,
+evidently surprised. "I always thought the Covent Garden audience was
+such a cold one."
+
+"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Charmian.
+
+She remembered the first night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. Suddenly a
+chill ran all through her, as if a stream of ice-cold water had trickled
+upon her.
+
+"Really!" said Hostatter. "And yet we Americans are said to have a bad
+reputation for noise."
+
+He had been smiling, but looked suddenly doubtful.
+
+"But as you say," he added, rather hastily, "in a theater we
+concentrate, especially when we are presented with something definitely
+artistic, as we are to-night."
+
+He shook hands.
+
+"Definitely artistic. My most sincere congratulations."
+
+He went out, and another man called Stephen Clinch, an ally of
+Crayford's immediately came in. After a few minutes of conversation he
+said:
+
+"Everybody is admiring the libretto. First-rate stuff, isn't it? I
+expected to find the author with you. Isn't he in the house?"
+
+"Yes, but he told us he would sit in the stalls," said Charmian.
+
+"Haven't you seen him?"
+
+"No," said Claude.
+
+"Well, of course you'll appear after the next act with him. There's sure
+to be a call. And I know Gillier will be called for as well as you."
+
+His rather cold gray eyes seemed to examine the two faces before him
+almost surreptitiously. Then he, too, went out of the box.
+
+"A call after this act!" said Charmian.
+
+"I believe they generally summon authors and composers after the
+penultimate act over here."
+
+"You'll take the call, of course, Claudie?"
+
+There was a silence. Then he said:
+
+"Yes, I shall take it."
+
+His voice was hard. Charmian scarcely recognized it.
+
+"Then you'll have to go behind the scenes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you--"
+
+"I'll wait till the curtain goes up, and then slip out."
+
+Again there was a silence. Charmian broke it at length by saying:
+
+"I think Monsieur Gillier might have come to see us to-night. It would
+have been natural if he had visited our box."
+
+"Perhaps he will come presently."
+
+A bell sounded. The third act was about to begin.
+
+Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous
+desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up
+softly from his seat.
+
+"I'll slip away now," he whispered.
+
+She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed
+to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word--she knew not the
+word it would be--of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her
+eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she
+moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchief to her
+eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run
+over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew
+what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within
+her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now
+she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.
+
+There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it
+was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed
+her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up
+and opened the door.
+
+"May I come in for a little while?" came a calm whisper from Susan
+Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white
+gloves over her hands and arms.
+
+"Oh, Susan--yes! I am all alone."
+
+"That is why I came."
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer
+and they saw your husband pass. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he
+was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute."
+
+She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.
+
+"Where were you sitting?" she whispered.
+
+"Here, at the back. Sit by me--oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers."
+
+She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and
+looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the
+floor.
+
+"What is it?" said Susan.
+
+"Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never
+mind. Claude must have taken it."
+
+The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man
+takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a "tight place."
+
+"Sit here!" she whispered to Susan.
+
+Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one
+of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak
+again till the third act was finished.
+
+It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate. Charmian
+had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal.
+She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that
+evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in
+a sort of fierce and active despair: "This is my idea of Hell." She felt
+that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act
+were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread
+an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a
+thing that had caused her agony.
+
+Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous
+act, and anticipating the end, when at last Claude would confront the
+world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.
+
+The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect
+smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on
+its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had
+devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said "wanted a
+lot of doing to." He had "made" the whole of it "over." Charmian
+remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at
+Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest
+at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land.
+She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea
+breaking sullenly against the long line of shore, the beads of sweat on
+the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes
+when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, "Tell me what
+you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
+
+This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely
+included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene,
+that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.
+
+Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away,
+though Susan--as she knew--would have made no effort to retain it. She
+was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to
+feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did
+give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she
+was able to feel, however vaguely, something of the universal,
+something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars,
+or hear the wind across vast spaces, or see a great deed done. As the
+act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call
+for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that
+went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this
+crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry
+the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first
+night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. There had been in it a marvellous sound
+which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made
+her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.
+
+If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at
+the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her
+fate with his.
+
+Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of,
+waited for, the sound.
+
+The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber.
+The scene which succeeded it was a triumph for Alston Lake. Whatever
+else this night might bring forth one thing was certain; Alston had
+"made good." He had "won out" and justified Crayford's belief in him.
+Even his father, reluctantly sitting in the stalls after a hard day in
+Wall Street, was obliged to be proud of his boy.
+
+"Dear old Alston!" Charmian found herself whispering. "He's a success.
+Alston's a success--a success!"
+
+She kept on forming the last word, and willing with all her might.
+
+"Success! Success--it is coming; it is ours! In a moment we shall know
+it, we shall have it! Success! Success!"
+
+With her soul and--it seemed to her--with her whole body, tense in the
+pretty green gown so carefully chosen for the great night, she willed,
+she called upon, she demanded success. And then she prayed for success.
+She shut her eyes, prayed hard, went on praying, marshalling all she and
+Claude had done before the Unseen Power, as reason for the blessing she
+entreated. And while she prayed, her hand ceased from twitching in Susan
+Fleet's.
+
+Long though the third act was, at last it drew near its end. And then
+Charmian began to be afraid, terribly afraid. She feared the decisive
+moment. She wished she were not in the theater. She thought of the
+asking eyes of the pressmen, expressing silently but definitely the
+great demand of this wonderful city, this wonderful country: "Be a
+success!" If that demand were not complied with! She recalled the
+notoriety she and Claude had had out here, the innumerable attentions
+which had been showered upon them, the interest which had been shown in
+them, the expectations aroused by Claude. She recalled the many
+allusions that had been made to herself in the papers, the interviews
+with the "clever wife" who had done so much for her husband, the columns
+about her expedition to Paris to get Gillier's libretto for Claude.
+Crayford had taken good care that the "little lady" should have her full
+share of the limelight. Now, through shut eyelids she saw it blaze like
+an enemy.
+
+If the opera should go down despite all that had been done how could she
+endure the situation that would be hers? But it would not go down. She
+remembered that she had once heard that fear of a thing attracts that
+thing to you. Was she who had been so full of will, so resolute, so
+persistent, so marvellously successful up to a point, going to be a
+craven now, going to show the white feather? When that evening began she
+had been sitting in the front of the box, in full view of the audience.
+Now she was sitting in the shadow, clasping a woman's hand. Claude had
+gone to the front of the box when she retreated. Now, in a very few
+minutes, he was going to face the great multitude. He was showing will,
+grit, to-night. And she felt, she knew, that, whatever the occasion,
+there was in Claude something strong enough to turn a bold front to it
+to-night, perhaps on any night or any day of the year. She must help
+him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She
+doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at
+such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow
+like a poltroon.
+
+She drew her hand away from Susan's, got up, and took her place alone in
+the front of the box, in sight of all the people in the stalls, in
+sight also of Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier. Susan remained where she
+was. She felt that Charmian needed to be alone just then. She liked her
+for the impulse which she had divined.
+
+At last the curtain fell.
+
+People applauded.
+
+"This is the American way," Charmian was saying to herself. "Not our
+way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of
+Covent Garden."
+
+Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening
+for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that
+stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.
+
+"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo,
+Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"
+
+The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself,
+and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of
+the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down
+into the soul of the audience.
+
+"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show
+it. I am going to hear the sound."
+
+With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that
+was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat
+violently.
+
+"The sound! The sound!"
+
+The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause
+continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English
+ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.
+
+"They are calling for Claude!"
+
+Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands
+forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.
+
+The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be
+dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite
+apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the
+bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite
+pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against
+terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a
+monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it
+was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.
+
+But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round,
+she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs
+of opera-glasses.
+
+Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.
+
+Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.
+
+"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.
+
+"Gillier! Author! Author!"
+
+The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed
+itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again
+the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her
+eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.
+
+Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through
+the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.
+
+Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at
+Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at
+the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she
+was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped
+back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared
+before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated,
+looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone
+on the stage.
+
+Then suddenly came from the audience the sound!
+
+It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent
+Garden on the night of the first performance of _Le Paradis Terrestre_.
+But essentially it was the same sound.
+
+Charmian heard it and her lips grew pale. But she sat well forward in
+the box, and, though she saw two opera-glasses levelled at her, she
+lifted her hands again and clapped till Armand Gillier passed out of
+sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid
+for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and
+white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the
+"little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by
+Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a
+very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather
+soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock,
+compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne
+was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about
+half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck
+of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was
+still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people
+for whom the preparations had been made came in.
+
+"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.
+
+She turned.
+
+"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white
+heather?"
+
+She had Alston's red roses in her hand.
+
+"I am going to put your roses in water now."
+
+She turned again to the waiter.
+
+"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper
+at once."
+
+"Certainly, ma'am!"
+
+"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied
+with it."
+
+She picked it up and handed it to Alston.
+
+"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."
+
+She went away, smiling.
+
+The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone
+together.
+
+Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.
+
+"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot
+of people round us, or--really to tell you, I mean, how fine your
+performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from
+to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve
+this great success."
+
+Alston wrung his friend's hand.
+
+"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs.
+Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have
+scored in it."
+
+"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."
+
+"I shall never enjoy singing any rôle so much as I have enjoyed singing
+your Spahi."
+
+"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any rôle better," said
+Claude.
+
+Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.
+
+"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper!
+Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly
+here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"
+
+For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.
+
+"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so
+splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I
+only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss
+Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he
+thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite
+finished?"
+
+"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely
+upon her lively chattering.
+
+Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of
+inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.
+
+"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost
+afraid--here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I
+think. Suppose we--"
+
+"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his
+glass.
+
+"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.
+
+"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only
+we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them.
+Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I
+recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was
+very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you
+take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came
+to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."
+
+"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"
+
+"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about
+Blue Points--"
+
+She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an
+opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed
+to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his
+exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her
+champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her
+eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of
+intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with
+a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him
+herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one
+when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the
+door of the lobby.
+
+Charmian moved uneasily.
+
+"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."
+
+She got up.
+
+"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.
+
+He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.
+
+"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+"What is it, Claude?"
+
+"A note or letter."
+
+"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"
+
+"Apparently."
+
+"Do read it. But have you finished?"
+
+"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."
+
+He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was
+burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and
+Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She
+gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a
+letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so
+Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows
+came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was
+with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to
+Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she
+heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which
+slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When
+he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat,
+and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but
+she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she
+could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table.
+Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.
+
+"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.
+
+"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."
+
+"Well, then--"
+
+She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.
+
+"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.
+
+"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"--his kind and honest eyes went
+from Charmian to Claude--"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the
+way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The
+fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take
+it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel
+like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both want a good long
+rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"
+
+He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar,
+lit it for him.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Charmian--" he said.
+
+He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather
+blunt features looked boyish and emotional.
+
+"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to
+the critics and the public."
+
+He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.
+
+"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."
+
+He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just
+repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.
+
+"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.
+
+Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door
+behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any
+words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She
+moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them
+down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which
+the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the
+water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long
+stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent
+sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
+When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do.
+And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it
+ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and
+Claude came in.
+
+"What a lot you had to say to each--" she began.
+
+She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.
+
+"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after
+a moment of silence.
+
+"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all
+till to-morrow. Do you mind?"
+
+"No."
+
+Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing
+expression which had stopped the words on her lips. Always Claude's
+face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by
+that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she
+had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt
+frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.
+
+"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I
+don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure
+I couldn't."
+
+"You were telling him again how splendidly--"
+
+"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper.
+I had to tell him something else--what I thought of my own."
+
+"What you--what you thought of your own!"
+
+"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless,
+soulless, hateful work."
+
+"Claude!" she faltered.
+
+"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have
+deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here
+at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"--his eyes pierced her--"do you
+dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when
+you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you
+dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"
+
+"How can you--oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack
+your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will,
+a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind.
+"It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't--"
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you
+didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I
+shall not believe you."
+
+She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her
+strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight
+against the malign power of the audience.
+
+"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"
+
+His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak,
+to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius,
+that everyone would recognize it as such soon, very soon, if not now,
+immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not
+speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his
+gaze.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity
+left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"
+
+He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand
+to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers--Madre's
+cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.
+
+"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.
+
+She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the
+other corner of the sofa beside him.
+
+"I want you to read that."
+
+He gave her the letter.
+
+"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.
+
+She took the letter and read.
+
+     "MY DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've left the opera-house and have
+     come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work
+     which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send
+     this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of
+     me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate
+     it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and
+     think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say
+     we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no
+     convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we
+     are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of
+     faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I
+     try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work
+     to-night. That is why I am sending you this.
+
+     "Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say
+     that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long
+     not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me.
+     Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which
+     troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be
+     a success.
+
+     "That's the wound!
+
+     "I don't know, of course--I can't know--whether you are aware of
+     the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is
+     presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who
+     couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to
+     try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are
+     a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing
+     this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew
+     to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no
+     more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of
+     gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you
+     must know.
+
+     "Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'
+
+     "It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other
+     night, after I dined with you--you remember? Gold it was, that's
+     certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the
+     world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great
+     article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night.
+     That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this
+     season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to
+     do it. And yet--do I altogether? I don't want to show up as
+     conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun
+     to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article,
+     be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that
+     cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer
+     to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better
+     still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go
+     ahead. I can't do anything else.
+
+     "But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music
+     worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.--Your
+     very sincere friend, and your admirer,
+                                             "ALFRED VAN BRINEN."
+
+
+
+Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she
+bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When
+she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a
+long time. The letter had vanished from her sight. And how much else
+had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.
+
+At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You've finished the letter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I have it, then?"
+
+She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted
+her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She
+heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why?
+Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am
+tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as
+have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to
+remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of
+weakness."
+
+Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of
+growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.
+
+"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured
+me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous
+lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act
+Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the
+piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that
+the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.
+
+"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my
+complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience
+applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was
+necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made
+comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,
+before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true
+enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."
+
+He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and
+walked toward the farther wall of the room.
+
+"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing
+to you?"
+
+He had turned.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Crayford said nothing?"
+
+"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all
+made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"
+
+"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself.
+And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've
+all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And
+you--you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what
+I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself,
+and you least of all!"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from
+the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to
+guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some
+talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success!
+You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you
+had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little
+unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little
+unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom
+nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his
+friends. You thought I was an eccentricity--"
+
+"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve
+which had broken in this reserved man.
+
+"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was
+meant to do, what I could do, drawing my inspiration not from the
+fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts,
+which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found
+their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other
+people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care
+what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And
+from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's
+the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till
+she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe--I believe in my
+soul it's the only chance for a man."
+
+He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:
+
+"The only chance for a man."
+
+He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the
+world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface
+ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a
+host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that
+I fancied I might make something of since we married, _The Hound of
+Heaven_, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found
+me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and
+opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted
+yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in
+London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life
+of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all
+that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for
+me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to
+let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps
+you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do
+it. But I've got to build in freedom."
+
+His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes
+not of a man crushed but of a man released.
+
+She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.
+
+"In--freedom?" she almost whispered.
+
+She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the failure before
+the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt,
+had completely overwhelmed her.
+
+In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void
+opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till
+this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm
+ground.
+
+"In freedom!" she said again. "What--what do you mean?"
+
+He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look
+of surprise.
+
+"What do you mean?" she repeated.
+
+And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.
+
+"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never
+had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw
+you."
+
+She got slowly up from the sofa.
+
+"Is that--all you mean?" she said.
+
+"All! Isn't it enough?"
+
+"But is it all? I want to know--I must know!"
+
+The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look
+like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as
+if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly.
+The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her
+eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that
+went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer
+to her.
+
+"Is that all you meant by freedom?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She sighed and went forward against him.
+
+"Did you think--do you care?" he stammered.
+
+All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his
+arms around her.
+
+"Do you care for the man who has failed?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!"
+
+She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek,
+breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.
+
+At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed
+into his, and said:
+
+"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was--the man,
+not the triumph."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to
+take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on
+a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on
+the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.
+
+"Yes, my only mother, if--there's always an 'if' in our poor lives,
+isn't there?"
+
+"If?" said her mother gently.
+
+"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the
+winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it
+in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America.
+Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played
+agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of
+dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She
+sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her
+delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which
+at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and
+fro.
+
+"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at
+last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian.
+Claude wishes to go there again?"
+
+"It is Claude who has decided the whole thing."
+
+Charmian's voice held a new sound. Mrs. Mansfield looked closely at her
+daughter.
+
+"You see, Madre, he and I--well, I think we have earned our retreat.
+We--we did stand up to the failure. We went to the first night of
+Jacques Sennier's new opera and helped, as everyone in an audience can
+help, to seal its triumph. I--I went round to Madame Sennier's box with
+Claude--Adelaide Shiffney and Armand Gillier were in it!--and
+congratulated her. Madre, we faced the music."
+
+Her voice quivered slightly. Mrs. Mansfield impulsively took her child's
+hands and held them.
+
+"We faced the music. Claude is strong. I never knew what he was before.
+Without that tremendous failure I never should have known him. He helped
+me. I didn't know one human being could help another as Claude helped me
+after the failure of the opera. Even Mr. Crayford admired him. He said
+to me the last day, when we were going to start for the ship: 'Well,
+little lady, you've married the biggest failure we've brought over here
+in my time, but you have married a man!' And I said--I said--"
+
+"Yes, my only child?"
+
+"'I believe that's all a woman wants.'"
+
+"Is it?"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield's dark, intense eyes searched Charmian's.
+
+"Is it all that _you_ want?"
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"Isn't the fear of the crowd still haunting you? Isn't uneasy ambition
+still tugging at you?"
+
+Charmian took her foot away from Caroline's side and sat very still for
+a moment.
+
+"I do want Claude to succeed, yes, I do, Madre. I believe every woman
+wants her man to succeed. But I shall never interfere again--never. I've
+had my lesson. I've seen the truth, both of myself and of Claude. But I
+shall always wish Claude to succeed, not in my way, but in his own. And
+I think he will. Yes, I believe he will. Weren't we--he and I--both
+extremists? I think perhaps we were. I may have been vulgar--oh, that
+word!--in my desire for fame, in my wish to get out of the crowd. But
+wasn't Claude just a little bit morbid in his fear of life, in his
+shrinking from publicity? I think, perhaps, he was. And I know now he
+thinks so. Claude is changed, Madre. All he went through in New York has
+changed him. He's a much bigger man than he was when we left England.
+You must see that!"
+
+"I do see it."
+
+"From now onward he'll do the work he is fitted to do, only that. But I
+think he means to let people hear it. He said to me only last night:
+'Now they all know the false man, I have the wish to show them the man
+who is real.'"
+
+"The man who had the crucifix standing before his piano," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, in a low voice. "The man who heard a great voice out of the
+temple speaking to the seven angels."
+
+She paused.
+
+"Did he ever play you that?" she asked Charmian.
+
+"One night in America, when our dear friend, Alfred Van Brinen, was with
+us. But he played it for Mr. Van Brinen."
+
+"And--since then?"
+
+"Madre, he has played it since then for me."
+
+Charmian got up from her chair. She stood by the fire. Her thin body
+showed in clear outline against the flames, but her face was a little in
+shadow.
+
+"Madretta," she began, and was silent.
+
+"Yes?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Susan Fleet and I were once talking about theosophy. And Susan said a
+thing I have never forgotten."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"She said: 'It's a long journey up the Ray.' I didn't understand. And
+she explained that by the Ray she meant the bridge that leads from the
+personal which perishes to the immortal which endures. Madre, I shall
+always be very personal, I think. I can't help it. I don't know that I
+even want to help it. But--but I do believe that in America, that night
+after the opera, I took a long, long step on the journey up the Ray. I
+must have, I think, because that night I was happy."
+
+Her eyes became almost mysterious in the firelight. She looked down and
+added, in a withdrawn voice:
+
+"_I_ was happy in failure!"
+
+"No, in success!" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19491-8.txt or 19491-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/9/19491/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/19491-8.zip b/19491-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3bcb42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-8.zip
diff --git a/19491-h.zip b/19491-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cb3fd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h.zip
diff --git a/19491-h/19491-h.htm b/19491-h/19491-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3590eb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/19491-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,21590 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Way Of Ambition, by Robert Hichens.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    hr { width: 33%;
+	 margin-top: 2em;
+	 margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+                visibility: hidden;
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+
+    .author {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Way of Ambition
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Illustrator: J. H. Gardner Soper
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19491]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgcover.jpg" alt="Cover" title="Cover" /></div>
+
+<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/imgfrontspiece.jpg"
+             alt="CHARMIAN, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT" /><br />
+         CHARMIAN, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT AN EXTRAORDINARY CORNISH
+GENIUS?<br />D'YOU LIKE HIM SO MUCH?"&mdash;<a href='#Page_76'><b>Page 76</b></a>
+    </div>
+
+
+  <h1>THE<br />
+  WAY OF AMBITION<br /><br /></h1>
+
+  <h4>BY</h4>
+
+  <h2>ROBERT HICHENS</h2>
+
+  <p class='center'><i>Author of "The Garden of Allah,"<br />"The Fruitful Vine,"
+  "The Woman with the Fan," "Tongues of
+  Conscience," "Felix," etc.</i></p>
+
+  <p class='center'>WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR<br />
+  AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE BY<br />
+  J. H. GARDNER SOPER</p>
+
+  <div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img004a.jpg" alt="Publishers motif" title="Publishers motif" /></div>
+
+  <p class='center'>NEW YORK<br />
+  FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY<br />
+  PUBLISHERS<br /><br />
+
+  Copyright, 1913, by<br />
+  Robert Hichens<br />
+
+  Copyright, 1912, 1913, by<br />
+  The Butterick Publishing Co.<br />
+  <i>August, 1913</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /></p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'Charmian, what's all this about an extraordinary Cornish genius?<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">D'you like him so much?'"</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#frontis'><b><i>Frontispiece</i></b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'This is the last thing I've done'"</td><td align='right'><a href='#LAST_THING'><b>40</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced'"</td><td align='right'><a href='#WE_WIVES'><b>242</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"At her feet the crouching Arabs never stirred"</td><td align='right'><a href='#HER_FEET'><b>258</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win!'"</td><td align='right'><a href='#CLAUDIE'><b>378</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /></p>
+<h2>THE WAY OF AMBITION</h2>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>"We want a new note in English music," said Charmian, in her clear and
+slightly authoritative voice. "The Hallelujah Chorus era has gone at
+last to join all the Victorian relics. And the nation is drifting
+musically. Of course we have a few composers who are being silly in the
+attempt to be original, and a few others who still believe that all the
+people can stand in the way of home-grown products is a ballad or a Te
+Deum. But what we want is an English composer with a soul. I'm getting
+quite sick of heads. They are bearable in literature. But when it comes
+to music, one's whole being clamors for more."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard a new note in English music," observed a middle-aged, bald
+and lively-looking man, who was sitting on the opposite side of the
+drawing-room in Berkeley Square.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but, Max, you always&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"An absolutely new note," interrupted Max Elliot with enthusiastic
+emphasis, turning to the man with the sarcastic mouth who had just
+spoken. "Your French blood makes you so inclined to incredulity, Paul,
+that you are incapable of believing anything but that I am carried
+away."</p>
+
+<p>"As usual!"</p>
+
+<p>"As sometimes happens, I admit. But you will allow that in matters
+musical my opinion is worth something, my serious and deliberately
+formed opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"How long has this opinion been forming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some months."</p>
+
+<p>"Some months!" exclaimed Charmian. "You've kept your new note to
+yourself all that time! Is it a woman? But of course it can't be. I
+don't believe there will ever be a great woman composer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is not a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it born in the gutter?" asked Paul Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say it's aristocratic!" said Charmian, slightly screwing up her
+rather Japanese-looking eyes. "I cannot believe that anything really
+original in soul, really intense, could emanate from the British
+peerage. I know it too well."</p>
+
+<p>"It is neither aristocratic nor from the gutter. It is of the middle
+classes. Its father is a banker in the West of England."</p>
+
+<p>"A banker!" said Charmian in a deplorable voice.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Cornish."</p>
+
+<p>"Cornish! That's better. Strange things sometimes come out of Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>"It has a little money of its own."</p>
+
+<p>"And its name&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is Claude Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath," slowly repeated Charmian. "The name means nothing to me.
+Do you know it, Mr. Lane?"</p>
+
+<p>Paul Lane shook his smooth black head.</p>
+
+<p>"Heath has not published anything," said Max Elliot, quite unmoved by
+the scepticism with which the atmosphere of Mrs. Mansfield's
+drawing-room was obviously charged.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even a Te Deum?" asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"No, though I confess he has composed one."</p>
+
+<p>"If he has composed a Te Deum I give him up. He is <i>vieux jeu</i>. He
+should go and live in the Crystal Palace."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's superb!" added Max Elliot. "Till I heard it I never realized
+what the noble words of the Te Deum meant."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he got up and moved toward the window murmuring, "All the Earth
+doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence in the room. Charmian's eyes suddenly filled with
+tears, she scarcely knew why. She felt as if a world was opening out
+before her, as if there were wide horizons to call to the gaze of those
+fitted to look upon them, and as if, perhaps, she were one of these
+elect.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Everlasting!" The words, and the way in which Max Elliot had
+spoken them, struck into her heart, and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> made her feel keenly that
+she was a girl who had a heart that was not hard, that was eager,
+desirous, perhaps deep. As to Paul Lane, he stared at his remarkably
+perfect boots, and drew down the corners of his lips, and his white face
+seemed to darken as if a cloud floated through his mind and cast a
+shadow outward.</p>
+
+<p>In the pause the drawing-room door opened, and a woman with blazing dark
+eyes and snow-white hair, wearing a white tea-gown and a necklace of
+very fine Egyptian scarabs, came in, with an intense, self-possessed and
+inquiring look. This was Mrs. Mansfield, "my only mother," as Charmian
+sometimes absurdly called her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking, or you were talking, of something or somebody
+interesting," she said at once, looking round her at the three occupants
+of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliott turned eagerly toward her. He rejoiced in Mrs. Mansfield,
+and often came to her to "warm his hands at her delightful blaze."</p>
+
+<p>"Of somebody very interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom we don't know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whom very few people in London know."</p>
+
+<p>"A composer, my only mother, who never publishes, and who is the son of
+a banker in the West of England."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian seemed suddenly to have recovered her former mood, but she
+blinked away two tears as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't he be?" said Mrs. Mansfield, sitting down on a large sofa
+which stood at right angles to the wood fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but it doesn't seem right."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be ridiculously conventional, my only child."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian laughed, showing lovely, and very small teeth. She was not
+unlike her mother in feature, but she was taller, more dreamy, less
+vivid, less straightforward in expression. At times there was a hint of
+the minx in her. She emerged from her dreams to be impertinent. A
+certain shrewdness mingled with her audacity. At such moments, as men
+sometimes said, "you never knew where to have her." She was more
+self-conscious and more worldly than her mother. Secret ambition worried
+at her mind, and made her restless in body. When she looked at a crowd
+she sometimes felt an almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> sick sensation as of one near to drowning.
+"Oh, to rise, to be detached from all these myriads!" she thought. "To
+be apart and recognized as apart! Only that can make life worth the
+living." She had been heard to say, "I would rather sink forever in the
+sea than in the sea of humanity. I would rather die than be one of the
+unknown living." Charmian sometimes exaggerated. But she was genuinely
+tormented by the modern craze for notoriety. Only she called it fame.</p>
+
+<p>Once she had said something to her mother of her intense desire to
+emerge from the crowd. Mrs. Mansfield's reply was: "Do you believe you
+have creative force in you then?" "How can I know?" Charmian had
+answered. "I'm so young." "Try to create something and probably you'll
+soon find out," returned her mother. Since that day Charmian had tried
+to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs.
+Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her
+mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot crossed the room and sat down on the sofa by Mrs. Mansfield.
+He adored her quite openly, as many men did. The fact that she was a
+widow and would never marry again made adoration of her agreeably
+uncomplex. Everybody knew that Mrs. Mansfield would never marry again,
+but nobody perhaps could have given a perfectly clear explanation of
+how, or why, that knowledge had penetrated him. The truth was that she
+was a woman with a great heart, and had given that heart to the husband
+who was dead, and for whom she had never worn "weeds."</p>
+
+<p>"What are we to do for Charmian, my dear Max?" continued Mrs. Mansfield,
+throwing a piteous look into her mobile face, a piteous sound into her
+voice. "What can anyone do for a young woman of twenty-one who, when she
+is thinking naturally, thinks it impossible for a West of England banker
+to cause the birth of a son talented in an art?"</p>
+
+<p>"I always said there was intellectual cruelty in mother," said Charmian,
+drawing her armchair nearer to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It's bracing, tones up the mind," said Paul Lane. "But what about this
+new note? All we know is a Cornish extraction, a banker papa and a Te
+Deum."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;a Te Deum!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, looking suddenly sceptical.</p>
+
+<p>"I know! I know!" said Max Elliot. "I didn't want to hear it till I had
+heard it. And then I wanted to hear nothing else. The touch of genius
+startles everything into life."</p>
+
+<p>"Another genius!" said Paul Lane.</p>
+
+<p>And thereupon, as if acting on a sudden impulse, he got up, said
+good-bye, and went away with his curiosity, if he had any, ungratified.</p>
+
+<p>"He's spoilt by the French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs.
+Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have
+delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one
+was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and
+easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and
+using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English
+drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so
+thankful he is not a celebrity."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor ever likely to be unless he marries the wrong woman."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" asked Charmian with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman who is ambitious for him and pushes him."</p>
+
+<p>"But if this Claude Heath has so much talent, surely it would be a fine
+thing to make him give it to the world."</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on his temperament, I daresay," said Mrs. Mansfield. "I
+believe there are people who ought to hide their talents in a napkin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother! Explain!"</p>
+
+<p>"Some plants can only grow in darkness."</p>
+
+<p>"Very nasty ones, I should think! Deadly nightshade! That sort of
+thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor dear! I gave her light in a vulgar age. She can't help it," said
+Mrs. Mansfield to Max Elliot. "We are her refined seniors. But sheer
+weight of years has little influence. Never mind. Go on. You and I at
+least can understand."</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke she laid her hand, on which shone several curious rings,
+over Charmian's, and she kept it there while Max Elliot gave some
+account of Claude Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not particularly handsome in features. He's quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> conventional in
+dress. His instinct would probably be to use the shell as a close
+hiding-place for anything strange, unusual that it contains. He crops
+his hair, and, I should think, wets it two or three times a day for fear
+people should see that it has a natural wave in it. His neckties are the
+most humdrum that can be discovered in the shops."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he dislike his appearance?" asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay. The worst of it is that he has eyes that give the whole
+thing away to a Mrs. Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>"What, and not to me?" said Charmian, in an injured note.</p>
+
+<p>"She's fairly sharp, poor dear!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, in a rescuing
+voice. "You mustn't be too hard on her."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"And a Charmian Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>"What color are his eyes?" inquired Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I really can't tell you for certain, but I should think dark gray."</p>
+
+<p>"And where does he live?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a little house not far from St. Petersburg Place on the north side
+of the Park, Mullion House he calls it. He's got a studio there which
+opens into a pocket-handkerchief of a garden. He keeps two women
+servants."</p>
+
+<p>"Any dogs?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Cats?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel as if I should like him. Does he compose at the piano?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, away from it."</p>
+
+<p>"He's unsympathetic. Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties,
+composing away from the piano, no animals&mdash;it's all against me except
+the little house."</p>
+
+<p>"Because you take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said
+her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add,
+without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in
+your views. You can't forget having read the <i>Vie de Boh&ecirc;me</i>, and having
+heard, and unfortunately seen, Paderewski when you were a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is my beloved mother's fault that I ever was a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, don't press down that burden of crime upon my soul! Lift it, by
+freeing yourself from the Brighton tradition, which I ought to have kept
+for ever from you. And now, Max, tell us, whom does Mr. Heath know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know very little about his acquaintance. I met him first at
+Wonderland."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Charmian. "It sounds more promising."</p>
+
+<p>"It's gone now, but it was a place in Whitechapel, where they had boxing
+competitions, Conky Joe against the Nutcracker&mdash;that kind of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I give him up, Te Deum, Conky Joe and all!" she exclaimed in despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean me to meet him, Max?" asked Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can't keep him to myself any longer. I must share him with
+someone who understands. Come to-morrow evening, won't you, after
+dinner? Heath is dining with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Is Charmian invited?"</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot looked at Charmian, and she steadily returned his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," he said after a pause, "that you've got a certain hankering
+after lions?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hankering! Don't, don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you really have!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for
+lions. Tigers are my taste."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in
+darkness. And I believe this is one of them."</p>
+
+<p>When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking
+into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the
+prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped
+away from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very
+vulgar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in
+London," returned her mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd
+naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort
+to keep your head above water."</p>
+
+<p>"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well
+above water without your making any effort."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be
+inclined to rave about him."</p>
+
+<p>"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's
+<i>Teosofia</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play
+leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in
+it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated,
+charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and
+been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his
+day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of
+beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much
+admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She,
+too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick
+Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a
+chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were
+seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party
+which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic
+function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now
+inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at
+which might be met the <i>cr&egrave;me de la cr&egrave;me</i> of the intellectual and
+artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent,
+was ever to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the
+family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of
+the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his
+death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a
+horror of display, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having
+the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
+Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her
+life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its
+nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women
+who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within
+herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> the power to create anything original, and was far too
+intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be
+what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen
+limitations.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother
+knew it.</p>
+
+<p>On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining
+together before going to Max Elliot's, she said rather abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he have invited us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it wasn't necessary. But surely it would have been quite
+natural."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I require preparation?"</p>
+
+<p>"The new note!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is
+in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."</p>
+
+<p>Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done
+a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being
+obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable
+doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber,
+living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying
+injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a
+stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No
+letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic
+masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she
+may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."</p>
+
+<p>"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep
+like a tired child."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he will."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel he's going to."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why were you so anxious to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to be left out of things. No one does."</p>
+
+<p>"Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my
+beautiful mother."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"You could make any mother be a sister to you."</p>
+
+<p>Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots' green door in
+Cadogan Place.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established
+stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept
+it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely
+unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the
+City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he
+had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him.
+He was the friend of <i>prime donne</i>, a pillar of the opera, an ardent
+frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came
+into his life nobody seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients
+trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer,
+whose artistic temperament had brought her&mdash;or him, as the case might
+be&mdash;to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot's
+shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good
+heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not
+succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He's</i> not begun yet!" murmured Charmian to her mother, as the butler
+led them sedately down a rather long hall, past two or three doors, to
+the music-room which Elliot had built out at the back of his house.</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard that he was going to begin at all. We haven't come here
+for a performance, but to make an acquaintance."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charmian twisted her lips, and the butler opened the door and announced
+them.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the room, which was panelled with wood and was high, by a
+large open fireplace, Max Elliot was sitting with Paul Lane and two
+other people, a woman and a young man. The woman was large and broad,
+with brown hair, reckless hazel eyes, and a nose and mouth which
+suggested a Roman emperor. She looked about thirty-five. In her large
+ears, which were set very flat against her head, there were long,
+diamond earrings, and diamonds glittered round her neck. She was
+laughing when the Mansfields came in, and went on laughing while Max
+Elliot went to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney has just come," he said. "Paul has been dining."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;the other?" murmured Charmian, with a hushed air of awed
+expectation which was not free from a hint of mockery.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield sent her a glance of half-humorous rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath," answered Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>"How wonderful he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, don't be tiresome!" observed her mother, as they went toward
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The two men got up, and Charmian had an impression of height, of a bony
+slimness that was almost cadaverous, of irregular features, rather high
+cheek-bones, brown, very short hair, and large, enthusiastic and
+observant eyes that glanced almost piercingly at her, and quickly looked
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney remained in her armchair, moved her shoulders, and said in
+a rather deep, but not disagreeable voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Heath and I are hearing all about 'Marella.' It builds you up if
+you are a skeleton and pulls you down if you are enormous, as I am. It
+makes you sleep if you suffer from insomnia, and if you have the
+sleeping sickness it wakes you up. Dr. Curling has patented it, and
+feeds his patients on nothing else. Delia is living entirely on it, and
+is to emerge looking seventeen and a female Sandow. Mr. Heath is longing
+to try it."</p>
+
+<p>She had held out a powerful hand to the new arrivals, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> now turned
+toward the composer, who stood waiting to be introduced.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but no, please!" said Heath, speaking quickly and almost anxiously,
+with a certain na&iuml;vet&eacute; that was attractive, but that did not suggest
+simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack
+medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented
+to humbug us."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot took him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and added:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Claude Heath&mdash;Miss Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes&mdash;Heath had
+shaken hands quickly&mdash;were over. She looked across the room, and saw her
+mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that
+he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in
+that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from
+liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint
+sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man
+admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his
+favor.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted.</p>
+
+<p>As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years,
+and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on
+the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many
+people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about
+him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether
+he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost
+emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not
+handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness
+which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his
+whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather
+thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.
+His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite
+free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut,
+reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere,
+combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and
+manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.</p>
+
+<p>He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly
+on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious
+intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how
+she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>"Was boxing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Boxing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in
+Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."</p>
+
+<p>Lane smiled with his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species,
+but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This
+one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the
+truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that
+it is so."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:</p>
+
+<p>"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames
+say."</p>
+
+<p>This time Lane really smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well,
+Max, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney wants you."</p>
+
+<p>"I always want him. I swim in his irony and can't sink, like a tourist
+in the Dead Sea."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What a left-handed compliment!"</p>
+
+<p>"A right-handed one would bore you to death, and my aim in life is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To avoid being bored. How often do you succeed in your aim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever I am with you in this delightful house."</p>
+
+<p>"It is delightful," said Charmian to her host. "But why? Of course it is
+beautiful. But that's not all. It's personal. Perhaps that's it."</p>
+
+<p>She got up, and walked slowly away from the fire, very naturally, with a
+gesture, just touching her soft cheek and fluttering her fingers toward
+the glow, as if she were too hot. Max Elliot accompanied her.</p>
+
+<p>"And all the lovely music that has sounded here," she continued,
+"perhaps lingers silently in the air, and, without being aware of it, we
+feel the vibrations."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a
+low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a different
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we hear any of his music to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe now we may."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>Elliot looked toward Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Because of mother, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"He likes her."</p>
+
+<p>"Anyone can see that."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:</p>
+
+<p>"He's evidently very difficile for an unknown man."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't that at all. If you ever know him well, you will
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she asked with petulance.</p>
+
+<p>"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves,"
+he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney,
+delightful though she is."</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn't want even to ask me."</p>
+
+<p>"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney
+to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so
+clever and artistic&mdash;though she's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> ignorant of music&mdash;over the whole
+thing, that&mdash;well, here she is."</p>
+
+<p>"And here I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.</p>
+
+<p>He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over
+the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When
+she looked at him I could see at once that she made him feel
+transparent."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor thing! Tell me, do you enjoy very much protecting all the
+sensitive artistic temperaments that come into this room? Do you enjoy
+arranging the cotton-wool wadding so that there may be no chance of a
+nasty jar, to say nothing of a breakage?"</p>
+
+<p>He pursed his rather thick lips, that smiled so easily.</p>
+
+<p>"When the treasure is a treasure, genuinely valuable, I don't mind it. I
+feel then that I am doing worthy service."</p>
+
+<p>"You really are a dear, you know!" she said, with a sudden change, a
+melting. "It was good of you to ask me, when you didn't want to."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned a little toward him, with one light hand palm downward on the
+cushion of the sofa, and her small, rather square chin thrust forward in
+a way that made her look suddenly intense.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try not to be like Mrs. Shiffney. I'll try not to make him feel
+transparent."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure that you could," he said, smiling at her.</p>
+
+<p>"How horrid of you to doubt my powers! Why, why will nobody believe I
+have anything in me?"</p>
+
+<p>She brought the words out with a force that was almost vicious. As she
+said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes
+travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been
+speaking to him of her, had been making some assertion about her. For he
+seemed to look at her with inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>When Charmian turned away her eyes from his she added to Max Elliot:</p>
+
+<p>"But what does it matter? Because people, some people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> can't see a
+thing, that doesn't prove that it has no existence. And I don't really
+care what people think of me."</p>
+
+<p>"This&mdash;to your old friend!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And besides, I expect one must possess to discover."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was almost complacent.</p>
+
+<p>"You deal in enigmas to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"One ought to carry a light when one goes into a cave to seek for gold."</p>
+
+<p>But Elliot would not let her see that he had from the first fully
+understood her impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of
+the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."</p>
+
+<p>"There's Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don't think we shall have it
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again assuming a
+semblance of awe.</p>
+
+<p>The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others.
+She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were
+almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close
+to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the
+world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with
+discrimination and with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he's a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to
+some artist. "But <i>what</i> a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he
+called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in
+Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a
+criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of
+nudging the air in one's direction so that one feels it in one's side.
+Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a
+biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."</p>
+
+<p>"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went to the Royal College at Kensington Gore."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney, who was very cosmopolitan, had a flat in Paris, and was
+more often out of England than in it, slightly raised her eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't studied in France or Germany?"</p>
+
+<p>Heath began to look rather uncomfortable, and slightly self-conscious.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, then as if with a decided effort he added:</p>
+
+<p>"I think the training a student gets at the Royal College is splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," said Max Elliot, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney shook her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it's quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice,
+gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled.
+"Don't think I'm criticizing it. Only I'm so dreadfully un-English, and
+I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah
+bow-wow, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>At this point in the conversation Charmian tranquilly interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Heath," she said, slightly protruding her chin, "when you've done
+with my only mother"&mdash;Mrs. Shiffney's lips tightened ever so little&mdash;"I
+want you to be very nice to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Please tell me," said Heath, with the almost anxious eagerness that
+seemed to be characteristic of him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield fixed her blazing eyes on her daughter, slightly drawing
+down her gray eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's rather a secret."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian glanced round at the others, then she added:</p>
+
+<p>"It's about the Nutcracker."</p>
+
+<p>"The Nutcracker!"</p>
+
+<p>Heath puckered up his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She moved a little, and looked at the chair not far from the fire
+on which she had sat when first she came into the room. "I care rather
+for boxing. Now"&mdash;she went slowly toward the chair, followed by Heath,
+"what I want to know, and what you can tell me, is this"&mdash;she sat down,
+and leaned her chin on her upturned palm&mdash;"on <i>present</i> form do you
+believe the Nutcracker is up to Conky Ja-ky Joe?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Claude Heath sat down to reply to this question, Mrs. Shiffney said:</p>
+
+<p>"Conky Jarky Joe! I thought I was <i>dans le mouvement</i> up to my
+dog-collar, but I know nothing about the phenomenon. Where does it
+belong to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderland," said Elliot, in a gravely romantic voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the land I've never seen, although I've had the yacht for so
+many years."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I!" said Paul Lane. "I don't believe it exists, or we must have
+been there. We have both been everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell the poor things about it," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Then Adelaide can
+get up steam on <i>The Wanderer</i> and realize her dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Elliot told me he met you there, and I remember distinctly his
+saying the fight was on between those two pets of the ring," said
+Charmian plaintively, after a certain amount of negation from Claude
+Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I'm sure he didn't tell you I was an authority on boxing
+form."</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you want to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't mind. But it isn't my chief aim in life."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was silent. She leaned back, taking her chin from her hand, and
+at last said gravely:</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't <i>that</i>, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"That&mdash;what?" exclaimed Heath, looking at her and away from her.</p>
+
+<p>"That you want. It's something else. Because you know you want a very,
+very great deal of something."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a good many of us do, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I do. I'm quite satisfied with my life. I have a good
+mother, a comfortable home. What should a properly-brought-up English
+girl, who has been educated at Brighton, want more?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad indeed to know that a Brighton education stands its
+receiver in such good stead in the after years, very glad indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are laughing at me. And that's unchristian."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but&mdash;but you were laughing at me!"</p>
+
+<p>Despite Heath's eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner,
+Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only
+the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now
+she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance
+with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely
+knew why she had done so. But she half thought, only half because of her
+self-respect, that she had been a little afraid of him, and so had
+instinctively caught up some armor, put a shield in front of her. Was
+she really impressed by a well-spoken-of Te Deum? She glanced at Heath
+inscrutably, as only woman can, and knew that she was not. It was the
+man himself who had caused her to fall into what she already thought of
+as a mistake. There was in Heath something that almost confused her. And
+she was not accustomed to be confused.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made a bad beginning," she almost blurted out, not able to escape
+from artifice, yet speaking truth. "And I'm generally rather good at
+beginnings. It's so easy to take the first step, I think, despite that
+silly saying which, of course, I'm not going to quote. It's when one is
+getting to know a person really well that difficulties generally begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, because it's then that very reserved people begin hurriedly
+building barricades, isn't it? I ask you, because I'm not at all
+reserved."</p>
+
+<p>"But how should I know any better than you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, when you're so unreserved, too? No, that's true."</p>
+
+<p>Heath's eyes troubled Charmian. She was feeling with every moment less
+at ease in his companionship and more determined to seem at ease. Being
+generally self-possessed, she had a horror of slipping into shyness and
+so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to
+speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had
+seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a
+heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was
+to-night! Desperation seized her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We must leave the question to the reserved," she said. "Poor things! I
+always pity them. They can never taste life as you and I and our kind
+are able to. We are put here to try to know and to be known. I feel sure
+of that. So the reserved are for ever endeavoring to escape their
+destiny. No wonder they are punished!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that I entirely agree with your view as to the reason why
+we are put here," observed Heath, without a trace of obvious sarcasm.
+Nevertheless, the mere words stung Charmian's almost childish
+self-conceit.</p>
+
+<p>"But I wasn't claiming to have pierced the Creator's most secret
+designs!" she exclaimed. "I was simply endeavoring to state that it can
+scarcely be natural for men and women to try to hide all they are from
+each other. I think there's something ugly in hiding things; and
+ugliness can't be meant."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugliness is certainly not meant," said Heath, and for the first time
+she felt as if she were somewhere not very far from him. "Except very
+often by man. Isn't it astonishing that men created Venice and that men
+have now put steam launches in the canals of Venice!"</p>
+
+<p>Venice! Charmian seized upon the word, mentally leaped upon and clung to
+the city in the sea. From that moment their conversation became easier,
+and gradually Charmian began to recover from her strange social
+prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt.
+Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the
+talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their
+intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of
+course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments
+must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is
+Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about?
+Charmian said that to herself afterward, and was amazed at her own
+vulgarity of mind. Ah, yes! That was what she had disliked in Claude
+Heath&mdash;his faculty of making her feel almost vulgar-minded,
+vulgar-intellected! She coined horrible bastard words in her efforts to
+condemn him. But all that was later on, when she had even said
+good-night to her only mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Their t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception
+at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician;
+but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a
+good-natured woman and seldom seemed to think ill of anybody. "I have so
+many sins on my own conscience," she sometimes said, "that I decline to
+see other people's. I want them to be blind to mine. Sin and let sin is
+an excellent rule in social life." She seldom condemned anyone except a
+bore.</p>
+
+<p>"If you ever pay a call, which I doubt," she said to Claude Heath as she
+was going, "I'm in Grosvenor Square. The Red Book will tell you."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with her almost insolently self-possessed and careless
+eyes, and added:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps some day you'll come on the yacht and show me the course to set
+for Wonderland. Mr. Elliot says you know it. And of course we all want
+to. I've been everywhere except there."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt if a yacht could take us there," said Heath, smiling as if to
+cover something grave or sad.</p>
+
+<p>A piercing look again came into Mrs. Shiffney's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I really hope I shall see you in Grosvenor Square," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Without giving him time to say anything more she went away, accompanied
+from the room by Max Elliot, walking carelessly and looking very
+powerful and almost outrageously self-possessed.</p>
+
+<p>Within the music-room there was a moment's silence. Then Paul Lane said:</p>
+
+<p>"Delightful creature!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Adelaide is delightful. And why? She always
+thinks of herself, lives for herself. She wouldn't put herself out for
+anyone. I've known her for years and would never go to her in a
+difficulty or trust her with a confidence. And yet I delight in her. I
+think it's because she's so entirely herself."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a darling!" said Lane. "She's so preposterously human, in her
+way, and yet she's always distinguished. And she's so clever as well as
+so ignorant. I love that com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>bination. Even on a yacht she never seems
+to have a bad day."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked at Claude Heath, who was silent. She was wondering
+whether he meant to call in Grosvenor Square, whether he would ever set
+sail with Mrs. Shiffney on <i>The Wanderer</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Max Elliot came back they gathered round the fire, no longer split
+up into duets, and the conversation was general. Heath joined in
+frequently, and with the apparent eagerness which was evidently
+characteristic of him. He had facility in speaking, great quickness of
+utterance, and energy of voice. When he listened he suggested to
+Charmian a mind so alive as to be what she called "on the pounce." He
+had an odd air of being swayed, carried away, by what those around him
+were saying, even by what they were thinking, as if something in his
+nature demanded to acquiesce. Yet she fancied that he was secretly
+following his own line of thought with a persistence that was almost
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>Lane led the talk at first, and displayed less of his irony than usual.
+He was probably not a happy man, though he never spoke of being unhappy.
+His habitual expression was of discontent, and he was too critical of
+life, endeavor, character, to be easily satisfied. But to-night he
+seemed in a softer mood than usual. Perhaps he had an object in seeming
+so. He was a man very curious in the arts. Elliot, who knew him well,
+was conscious that something in Heath's personality had made a strong
+impression upon him, and thought he was trying to create a favorable
+atmosphere in the hope that music might come of it. If this was so, he
+labored in vain. And soon doubtless he knew it. For he, too, pleaded
+another engagement, and, like Mrs. Shiffney, got up to go.</p>
+
+<p>Directly the door shut behind him Charmian was conscious of relief and
+excitement. She even, almost despite herself, began to hope for a Te
+Deum; and, hoping, she found means to be wise. She effaced herself, so
+she believed, by withdrawing a little into a corner near the fire,
+holding up her Conder fan open to shield her face from the glow, and
+taking no part in the conversation, while listening to it with a pretty
+appearance of dreaminess. She was conscious of her charming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> attitude,
+of the line made by her slender upraised arm, and not unaware of the
+soft and almost transparent beauty the light of a glowing fire gives to
+delicate flesh. Nevertheless, she really tried, in a perhaps
+half-hearted way, to withdraw her personality into the mist. And this
+she did because she knew well that her mother, not she, was en rapport
+with Claude Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm out of it," she said to herself, "and mother's in it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had been a restraint, Lane had been a restraint. It would
+be dreadful if she were the third restraining element. She would have
+liked to be triumphantly active in bringing things about. Since that was
+evidently quite out of the question she was resolved to go to the other
+extreme.</p>
+
+<p>"My only chance is to be a mouse!" she thought.</p>
+
+<p>At least she would be a graceful mouse.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at the delicate figures on her Conder fan. They, those three a
+little way from her, were talking now, really talking.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield was speaking of the endeavor of certain Londoners to
+raise the theater out of the rut into which it had fallen, and to make
+of it something worthy to claim the attention of those who did not use
+it merely for digestive purposes. She related a story of a disastrous
+theater-party which she had once joined, and which had been arranged by
+an aspiring woman with little sense of fitness.</p>
+
+<p>"We dined with her first. She had, somehow, persuaded Burling, the
+Oxford historian, Mrs. Hartford, the dear poetess who never smiles, and
+her husband, and Cummerbridge, the statistician, to be of the party.
+After dinner where do you think she took us?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the Oxford?" said Elliot, flinging his hands round his knee and
+beginning to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"To front row stalls at the Criterion, where they were giving a
+knockabout farce called <i>My Little Darling</i> in which a clergyman was put
+into a boiler, a guardsman hidden in a linen cupboard, and a penny
+novelette duchess was forced to retreat into a shower-bath in full
+activity. I confess that I laughed more than I had ever done in my life.
+I sat between Burling, who looked like a terrified hen, and Mr.
+Hartford,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> who was seriously attentive from beginning to end, and kept
+murmuring, 'Really! Really!' And I had the poetess's sibylline profile
+in full view. I was almost hysterical when it was over. As we were
+coming out Mr. Hartford said to his wife, 'Henrietta, I'm glad we came.'
+She rolled an eye on him and answered, with tears in the voice, 'Why?'
+'It's a valuable lesson. We now know what the British public needs.' Her
+reply was worthy of her."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?" said Elliot, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"'There are many human needs, Gabriel, which it is criminal to gratify.'
+Burling went home in a four-wheeler. Cummerbridge had left after the
+first act&mdash;a severe attack of neuralgia in the right eye."</p>
+
+<p>Elliot's full-throated laugh rang through the room. Heath was smiling,
+but almost sadly, Charmian thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it was <i>My Little Darling</i> which brought about the attempt at
+better things you were speaking of," he said to Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but their prophet is not mine!" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>An almost feverish look of vitality had come into her face, which was
+faintly pencilled by the fingers of sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think I hate the disintegrating drama more than I despise
+the vulgar idiocies which, after all, never really touch human life,"
+she continued. "No doubt it is sheer weakness on my part to be affected
+by it. But I am. Only last week Charmian and I saw the play that
+they&mdash;the superior ones&mdash;are all flocking to. The Premier has seen it
+five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of
+surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who
+wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a
+mock of &OElig;dipus."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, then, leaning forward, in a low and thrilling voice she
+quoted, "'For we are in Thy hand; and man's noblest task is to help
+others by his best means and powers.'"</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath gazed at her while she was speaking, and in his eyes
+Charmian, glancing over her fan, saw what she thought of as two torches
+gleaming.</p>
+
+<p>"I came out of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it
+with shame, feeling as if I should never find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> again the incentive to a
+noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had
+laughed&mdash;how I had laughed!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she began to laugh at the mere recollection of something in the
+play.</p>
+
+<p>"The wretch is terribly clever!" she exclaimed. "But he seems to me
+destructive."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but&mdash;" began Elliot. "Some such accusation has been brought
+against many really great men. The Empress Frederick told a friend of
+mine that no one who had not lived in Germany, and observed German life
+closely, could understand the evil spread through the country by
+Wagner's <i>Tristan</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the fault, the sin if you like, was in the hearers," said Heath,
+almost with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and stood by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Wagner was a builder. I believe Germany is the better for a <i>Tristan</i>,
+and I believe we should be the better for an English <i>Tristan</i>. But I
+doubt if we gain essentially by the drama in cap and bells."</p>
+
+<p>Elliot, who was fond of defending his friends, came vigorously to the
+defense of the playwright, to whom he was devoted and whose first nights
+he seldom missed. In the discussion which followed Charmian saw more
+clearly how peculiarly in tune her mother's mind was with Heath's.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the beginning of a great intimacy," she said to herself. "One
+of mother's great intimacies."</p>
+
+<p>And, for the first time she consciously envied her mother, consciously
+wished that she had her mother's brains, temperament, and unintentional
+fascination. The talk went on, and presently she drifted into it, took
+her small part in it. But she felt herself too brainless, too ignorant
+to be able to contribute to it anything of value. Her usually happy and
+innocent self-conceit has deserted her, with all her audacities. She was
+oddly subdued, was almost sad.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he really?" she thought more than once as she looked at
+Claude Heath.</p>
+
+<p>There was no mention of music, and at last Mrs. Mansfield got up to go.</p>
+
+<p>As they said good-night she looked at Heath and remarked:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We shall meet again?"</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her hand, and answered, slightly reddening:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope so! I do hope so!"</p>
+
+<p>That was all. There was no mention of the Red Book, of being at home on
+Thursdays, no "If you're ever near Berkeley Square," etc. All that was
+unnecessary. Charmian touched a long-fingered hand and uttered a cold
+little "Good-night." A minute more and her mother and she were in the
+motor gliding through damp streets in the murky darkness.</p>
+
+<p>After a short silence Mrs. Mansfield said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Charmian, you escaped! Are you very thankful?"</p>
+
+<p>"Escaped!" said a rather plaintive voice from the left-hand corner of
+the car.</p>
+
+<p>"The dreaded Te Deum."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a musician at all? I believe Max Elliot has been humbugging us."</p>
+
+<p>"He warned you not to expect too much in the way of hair."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not thirty."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you tell him about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"About you? I don't remember telling him anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you did, mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been
+something very trifling."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but
+she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the
+putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject
+quietly, and they were soon at home.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs.
+Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom
+went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the
+door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when
+she was alone.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and
+hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry
+child."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not to-night, you darling!"</p>
+
+<p>Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went
+away up the stairs between white walls to bed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the
+beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short
+time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends.
+She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a
+special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young
+man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that
+each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion
+to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art.
+Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other,
+perhaps the two reserves clung together.</p>
+
+<p>These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the
+other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.</p>
+
+<p>A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the
+other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this&mdash;Charmian was not included
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was
+incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone,
+against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm,
+chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was
+wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They
+spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the
+house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had
+there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now
+she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her
+own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her
+mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.</p>
+
+<p>Or was she gently, subtly, almost mysteriously excluded from it by
+Claude Heath?</p>
+
+<p>She chose to think so. And there were moments in which he chose to think
+that she obstinately declined to accept him as her mother accepted him,
+because she disliked him, was perhaps jealous of his intimacy with Mrs.
+Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>All this was below the surface. Charmian seemed friendly with Heath, and
+he, generally, at ease with her. But when he was alone with Mrs.
+Mansfield he was a different man. At first she thought little of this.
+She attributed it to the fact that Heath had a reserved nature and that
+she happened to hold a key which could unlock it, or unlock a room or
+two of it, leaving, perhaps, many rooms closed. But, being not only a
+very intelligent but a delicately sensitive woman, she presently began
+to think that there was some secret antagonism between her child and
+Heath.</p>
+
+<p>This pained her. She even considered whether she ought not to put an end
+to her intimacy with Heath. She had grown to value it. She was incapable
+of entering into a sentimental relation with any man. She had loved
+deeply, had had her beautiful summer. It had died. The autumn was upon
+her. She regretted. Often her heart was by a grave, often it was beyond,
+seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the
+golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not
+repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in
+people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of
+becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to
+her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had
+not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered
+Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life,
+sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which
+another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him.
+She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.</p>
+
+<p>But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> had the
+first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in
+Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps,
+troubled or irritated Heath.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield
+had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house
+near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she
+had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of
+his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never
+mentioned her dead husband to him.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the
+musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had
+heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked:
+"Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his
+compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed
+"No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary
+fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he
+added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to
+hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with
+his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored
+by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he
+had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he
+owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical
+development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his
+greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in
+persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which
+crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield
+taught him not to attempt any more persuasion. He realized that his
+first instinct had been right. The plant must grow in darkness. But he
+was always being carried away by artistic enthusiasms, and had an
+altruistic desire to share good things. And he dearly loved "a musical
+find." He had a certain name as a discoverer of talent, and there's so
+much in a name. The lives that have been changed, moulded, governed by a
+hastily conferred name!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield was inclined to believe that Heath had in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>vited her to
+tea with the intention of at last submitting his talent to her opinion.
+They had sometimes talked together of music, but much oftener of books,
+character, people, national movements, topics of the day. As she went to
+her bedroom to dress for her expedition, she felt a certain hesitation,
+almost a disinclination to go. To go was to draw a step or two nearer to
+Heath, and so, perhaps, to retreat a step or two from her child. To-day
+the fact that Charmian and Heath did not quite "hit it off together"
+vexed her spirit, and the slight mystery of their relation troubled her.
+As she went down to get into the motor she was half inclined to speak to
+Heath on the subject. She was quite certain that she would not speak to
+Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>The month was February, and by the time Mrs. Mansfield reached Mullion
+House evening was falling. A large motor was drawn up in front of the
+house, and as Mrs. Mansfield's chauffeur sounded a melodious chord the
+figure of a smartly dressed woman walked across the pavement and stepped
+into it. After an instant of delay, caused by this woman's footman, who
+spoke to her at the window, the car moved off and disappeared rapidly in
+the gathering darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.</p>
+
+<p>She was not certain, but she thought the passing figure had looked like
+Mrs. Shiffney's.</p>
+
+<p>The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very
+large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion,
+almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained
+out of respect for London ways.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, ma'am, he is in! He's expecting you."</p>
+
+<p>The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this
+woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's some here and there that would bother him to death, I'm sure,
+if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door
+gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> liking this
+unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my
+coming, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so, ma'am. This way, if you please!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Searle, Heath's cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall
+and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow passage.</p>
+
+<p>"He's in the studio, ma'am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder,
+sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Fan? A dog?"</p>
+
+<p>"My little girl, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to
+him for company as he wasn't working. 'Run, Fan!' says I. 'Go and cheer
+Mr. Heath up, there's a good girl!' I says. I knows very well there's
+nothing like a child to put you right after you've been worried. They're
+so simple, aren't they, ma'am? And we're all simple, I b'lieve, at
+'eart, though we're ashamed to show it. I'm sure I don't know why!"</p>
+
+<p>As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the
+composer's workroom.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him
+stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three
+years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair
+inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an
+almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child
+was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred
+appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but
+arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a
+change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there's
+a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he'll catch cold." (To Mrs.
+Mansfield.) "You'll excuse her, ma'am, but she's that nat'ral, clothes
+or no clothes it's all one to her."</p>
+
+<p>Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright
+blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified
+inquiry combined, perhaps, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> certain amount of very natural
+surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private
+interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically
+sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing
+up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female
+nature in embryo.</p>
+
+<p>Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and
+propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite
+understand. He's been sick and now he's getting better. Go with mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and
+continuously about Masterman's internal condition and "the new lydy,"
+while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at
+Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't kiss her," she said, "because I think it's a liberty to kiss
+one of God's creatures at first sight without a special invitation."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know!"</p>
+
+<p>Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes,
+always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual.
+He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, isn't it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for
+his studio. The other rooms are tiny."</p>
+
+<p>"What a delightful servant you have!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Searle&mdash;yes. She's a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever
+the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>"Fantail's delightful, too!" he added.</p>
+
+<p>"What is her real name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fanny. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I
+suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the
+room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in,
+perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very
+handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but
+there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books,
+not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which
+furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and
+papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. The
+piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well
+worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were
+dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor
+there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only
+flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a
+mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano
+there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that
+anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by
+oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in
+color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not
+discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few
+photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music
+and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round
+white collar.</p>
+
+<p>To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy,
+who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved
+the life of the brain.</p>
+
+<p>"And you've a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.</p>
+
+<p>"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I'm not at all rich, you know.
+But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a
+penny."</p>
+
+<p>A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated,
+walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield,
+again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I try for. I'm fond of London in a way, but I can't bear
+anything typical of London in my home."</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets
+weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."</p>
+
+<p>Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether&mdash;may I talk about
+myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Do, if you like to."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Do, then."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether a man is a coward to raise up barriers between himself
+and life, whether it is a mistake to have a retreat, as you rightly call
+this room, this house, and to spend the greater part of one's time alone
+in it? But"&mdash;he moved restlessly&mdash;"the real question is whether one
+ought to let oneself be guided by a powerful instinct."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect one ought to."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Oh, you're not eating anything!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will help myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney wouldn't agree with you."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't&mdash;didn't you see her? She went just before you came."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw someone. I thought it might be Adelaide. I wasn't sure."</p>
+
+<p>"It was she. I hadn't asked her to come and wasn't expecting her."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, then added abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"It was wonderfully kind of her to come, though. She is kind and clever,
+too. She has fascination, I think...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure she has."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, d'you know, there's something in her, and in lots of people I
+might get to know, I suppose, through her and Max Elliot, that I&mdash;well,
+I almost hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, whenever I come across one of them by chance I seem to hear a
+voice repeating, 'To-morrow we die&mdash;to-morrow we die&mdash;to-morrow we die.'
+And I seem to see something inside of them with teeth and claws
+fastening on pleasure. It's&mdash;it's like a sort of minotaur, and it gives
+me horrors. And yet I might go to it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield said nothing for a moment. She had finished her cup of
+tea, and now, with a little gesture, refused to have another.</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite true. There is the creature with teeth and claws, and it is,
+perhaps, horrible. But it's so sad that I scarcely see anything but its
+sadness."</p>
+
+<p>"You are kinder than I."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you know, I think you're the kindest human being I ever met, except
+one, that priest up there on the mantelpiece."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," she said, making allowance for herself to-day because of
+Heath's evident desire to talk intimately, a desire which she believed
+she ought to help, "but are you a Roman Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I wish I was!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I suppose you can't be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I suppose I'm one of those unsatisfactory people whose soul and
+whose brain are not in accord. That doesn't make for inward calm or
+satisfaction. But I can only hope for better days."</p>
+
+<p>There was something uneasy in his speech. She felt the strong reserve in
+him always fighting against the almost fierce wish to be unreserved with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"They will come, surely!" she said. "If you are quite sincere, sincere
+with yourself always and sincere with others as often as is possible."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right about its not being possible to be always sincere with
+others."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"They simply wouldn't let you!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "I feel as if I could be rather sincere with you
+sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Specially to-day, perhaps."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think so. We do get on, don't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we do."</p>
+
+<p>"I often wonder why. But we do. I'll move the table if you've really
+finished."</p>
+
+<p>He put the table away and sat down on the settle beside her, at the far
+end. And he turned, leaning his back against the upright end, and
+stretching one arm along the wooden top, on which his long fingers
+restlessly closed.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sorry I went to Max Elliot's till you came into the room," he
+said. "And ever since then I've been partly very glad."</p>
+
+<p>"But only partly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, because I've always had an instinctive dread of getting drawn in."</p>
+
+<p>"To the current of our modern art life. I'm sure you mean that."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. And of course Elliot is in the thick of it. Mrs. Shiffney's in
+it, and all her lot, which I don't know. And that fellow Lane is in it
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose I am in it with Charmian."</p>
+
+<p>Heath looked at the floor. Ignoring Mrs. Mansfield's remark, he
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I have some talent. It isn't the sort of talent to win popularity.
+Fortunately, I don't desire&mdash;in fact, I'm very much afraid of
+popularity. But as I believe my talent is&mdash;is rather peculiar,
+individual, it might easily become&mdash;well, I suppose I may say the rage
+in a certain set. They might drop me very soon. Probably they would&mdash;I
+don't know. But I have a strong feeling that they'd take me up violently
+if I gave them a chance. That's what Max Elliot can't help wanting. He's
+such a good fellow, but he's a born exploiter. Not in any nasty way, of
+course!" Heath concluded hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand."</p>
+
+<p>"And, I don't want to seem conceited, but I see there's something about
+me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have
+never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day
+she called. She wants me to go with her on <i>The Wanderer</i> for a cruise."</p>
+
+<p>"To Wonderland?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Heath shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"In the Mediterranean, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't that tempt you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, terribly. But I flatly refused to go. But she knew I was tempted.
+It's only curiosity on her part," he added, with a sort of hot, angry
+boyishness. "She can't make me out, and I didn't call. That's why she
+asked me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield mentally added a "partly" to the last sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very much afraid of exposing yourself&mdash;or is it your talent?&mdash;to
+the influence of what we may as well call the world," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose one's talent is oneself, one's best self."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps so. I have none. You know best about that. I expect you are
+right in being afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think I'm merely a rather absurd coward and egoist?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! But some people&mdash;many, I think&mdash;would say a talent is meant to
+be used, to be given to the light."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But I don't think the modern world wants mine. I"&mdash;he
+reddened&mdash;"I always set words from the Bible nearly or from the
+Prayer-Book."</p>
+
+<p>Smiling a little, as if saving something by humor, he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Not the <i>Song of Solomon</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't the English&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens! I know you are thinking of the Handel Festival and
+<i>Elijah</i> in the provinces!" he exclaimed. "I know you are!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to play you one or two of my things," he said
+impulsively. "Then you'll see at once."</p>
+
+<p>He went toward the piano. She sat still. She was with the striking
+unreserve of the reserved man when he has cast his protector or his
+demon away. With his back to her Heath turned over some music, moved a
+pile of sheets, set them down on the floor under the piano, searched.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, here it is!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="LAST_THING" id="LAST_THING"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img01.jpg"
+             alt="THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE" /><br />
+         <b>"'THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE'"&mdash;<a href='#Page_41'><i>Page 41</i></a></b>
+    </div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He grasped some manuscript, put it on the music-stand, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the last thing I've done. The words are taken from the
+sixteenth chapter of Revelation&mdash;'And I heard a great voice out of the
+temple saying to the seven angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials
+of the wrath of God upon the earth."' And so on."</p>
+
+<p>With a sort of anger his hands descended and struck the keys. Speaking
+through his music he gave Mrs. Mansfield indications of what it was
+expressing.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the sea. 'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea,
+and it became as the blood of a dead man.... The fourth angel poured out
+his vial upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with
+fire.... The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River
+Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings
+of the East might be prepared.'"</p>
+
+<p>The last words which Heath had set were those in the fifteenth verse of
+the chapter&mdash;"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and
+keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame."</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished he got up from the piano with a flushed face and,
+again speaking in a boyish and almost naive manner, said quickly:</p>
+
+<p>"There, that gives you an idea of the sort of thing I do and care about
+doing. For, of course, I never will attempt any subject that doesn't
+thoroughly interest me."</p>
+
+<p>He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if
+struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the
+settle.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you orchestrated it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've just finished the orchestration."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra?
+Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't."</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty
+distaste for publicity."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then
+I'll have done."</p>
+
+<p>He went once more to the piano.</p>
+
+<p>When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him.
+After a moment she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are sincere in your music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his
+work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"I had two or three things done at the College concerts," Heath
+continued. "I don't think they were much liked. They were considered
+very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer
+one's means or one can't express oneself at all."</p>
+
+<p>"And now you work quite alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are independent, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of
+thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money
+temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my
+compositions. I know that."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write
+an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to
+suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to
+see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words,
+"and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the
+East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in
+the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost
+riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said
+exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the
+thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> powerful
+imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."</p>
+
+<p>Heath looked pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs.
+Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by
+something maternal with which she was much more at ease.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio
+and asked him not to come to the front door.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't
+stayed too long?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's
+nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do
+keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay there are."</p>
+
+<p>"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women
+runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Fan begun yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Searle blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone
+interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"I must take care what I'm about."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked
+out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened,
+almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was
+dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."</p>
+
+<p>The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself
+wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just
+heard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she
+was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an
+Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs.
+Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was
+still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of
+the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive
+look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From
+her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her
+perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in
+search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady
+Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless
+and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong
+while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved
+nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was
+fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently
+when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as
+they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably
+cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with
+<i>The Wanderer</i> unless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He
+was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British
+Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for
+him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo,
+Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst
+of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and
+interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her,
+and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> as
+if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built,
+handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable
+tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes
+in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had
+a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to
+perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their
+restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to
+Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And
+Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a
+sensible fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her
+husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from
+her. "Another gown gone wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black
+hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I
+wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy,"
+he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the
+frankness of a grief-stricken child.</p>
+
+<p>"I never shall!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Addie?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's something in me&mdash;I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who
+didn't get tired of me!"</p>
+
+<p>She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:</p>
+
+<p>"So what hope is there? And I <i>do</i> so want to enjoy myself! I wonder if
+there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I
+do?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of
+the hand which held his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What
+else are we here for?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke seriously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose&mdash;to keep it up, don't you
+know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down
+it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>He flicked the ash from his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated
+curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things
+if the things were closely connected with herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for
+ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."</p>
+
+<p>She had just been for a month in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want
+Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the
+only living man I want to have on the cruise."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" observed Mr. Shiffney. "I've never heard of him. Is he one
+of your special pals?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. I met him at Max's. He's a composer, and I want to know what
+he's like."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect he's like all the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he isn't!" she observed decisively.</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't he come? Perhaps he's a bad sailor."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't even trouble himself to say that. He was in such a hurry to
+refuse that he didn't bother about an excuse. And this afternoon he
+called, when I was in, and never asked for me, only left cards and
+bolted, although I had been to his house to ask him to come on <i>The
+Wanderer</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of you, is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I'm sure. He's never been among <i>us</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor chap! But surely that's a reason for him to want to get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you think so? Wouldn't anyone think so? The way I'm bombarded!
+But he seems only anxious to keep out of everything."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A pose very likely."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I leave it to you. No one sharper in London. Is he a gentleman&mdash;all
+that sort of thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shiffney pulled up his trousers a little more, exposing a pair of
+striped silk socks which emerged from shining boots protected by white
+spats.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure. If he hadn't been he'd have jumped at you and <i>The
+Wanderer</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally. I shan't go at all now! What an unlucky woman I always am!"</p>
+
+<p>"You never let anyone know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Jimmy, I'm not quite a fool. Be down on your luck and not a soul
+will stay near you."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think not. Why should they? One wants a bit of life, not to
+hear people howling and groaning all about one. It's awful to be with
+anyone who's under the weather."</p>
+
+<p>"Ghastly! I can't stand it! But, all the same, it's a fearful <i>corv&eacute;e</i>
+to keep it up when you're persecuted as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Addie!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shiffney threw his cigar into the grate reflectively and lightly
+touched his moustaches, which were turned upward, but not in a military
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Things never seem quite right for you," he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"And other women have such a splendid time!" she exclaimed. "The
+disgusting thing is that he goes all the while to Violet Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>"She's dull enough and quite old too."</p>
+
+<p>"No, she isn't dull. You're wrong there."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay. She doesn't amuse me."</p>
+
+<p>"She's not your sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Too feverish, too keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind
+you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them
+jumped at one."</p>
+
+<p>"He does, apparently, unless it's really Charmian."</p>
+
+<p>"The girl? She's not bad. Wants to be much cleverer than she is, of
+course, like pretty nearly all the girls, except the sporting lot; but
+not bad."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Jimmy"&mdash;Mrs. Shiffney's eyes began once more to look audacious&mdash;"shall
+I ask Charmian Mansfield to come on the yacht?"</p>
+
+<p>"You think that might bring him? Why not ask both of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I won't have the mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"The best of reasons, too."</p>
+
+<p>"You understand us better than any man in London."</p>
+
+<p>She sat reflecting. She was beginning to look quite cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be rather fun," she resumed, after a minute. "Charmian
+Mansfield, Max&mdash;if he can get away&mdash;Paul Lane. It isn't the party I'd
+thought of, but still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Which of them were you going to take?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. And where did you mean to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him to the Mediterranean."</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know! Where can one go? That's another thing. It's always
+the same old places, unless one has months to spare, and then one gets
+bored with the people one's asked. Things are so difficult."</p>
+
+<p>"One place is very much like another."</p>
+
+<p>"To you. But I always hope for an adventure round the corner."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been round a lot of corners in my time, but I might almost as well
+have stuck to the club."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course <i>you</i> might!"</p>
+
+<p>She got up.</p>
+
+<p>"I must think about Charmian," she said, as she went casually out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney turned the new idea over and over in her restless mind,
+which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could
+not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself,
+never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted,
+had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen
+everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> books
+that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures
+which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and,
+moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or
+strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own
+line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon
+became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle.
+Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal
+feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she
+generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not
+condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick
+of it." And very soon a great many of her friends, and their friends,
+were sick of it, too. She was a quicksand because she was a singularly
+complete egoist. But very few people who met her failed to come under
+the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse,
+swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally,
+in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly,
+did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her
+gaiety and <i>joie de vivre</i> and for the energy with which she pursued
+enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned.
+She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time
+she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with
+their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life.
+And wise people did not bother her.</p>
+
+<p>She had seen that, for a moment, Claude Heath had been tempted by the
+invitation to the cruise. A sudden light had gleamed in his eyes, and
+her swift apprehension had gathered something of what was passing in his
+imagination. But almost immediately the light had vanished and the quick
+refusal had come. And she knew that it was a refusal which she could not
+persuade him to cancel unless she called someone to her assistance. His
+austerity, which attracted her whimsical and unscrupulous nature, fought
+something else in him and conquered. But the something else, if it could
+be revived, given new strength, would make a cruise with him, even to
+all the old places, quite interesting, Mrs. Shiffney thought. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> any
+refusal always made her greedy and obstinate. "I <i>will</i> have it!" was
+the natural reply of her nature to any "You can't have it!"</p>
+
+<p>She often acted impulsively, hurried by caprices and desires, and that
+same evening she sent the following note to Charmian:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class='author'>
+<span class="smcap">Grosvenor Square</span>,<br />
+<i>Thursday</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Charmian</span>,&mdash;You've never been on the yacht, though
+I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London
+for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the
+same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a
+pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of
+starting some time next month on <i>The Wanderer</i> for a cruise, to
+the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in,
+but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew
+and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to
+get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he
+works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all
+in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful
+mother.&mdash;In tearing haste, Yours,</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+<span class="smcap">Adelaide Shiffney</span>.
+</p></div>
+
+<p>"Why has she asked me?" said Charmian to herself, laying this note down
+after reading it twice.</p>
+
+<p>She had always known Mrs. Shiffney, but she had never before been asked
+to go on a cruise in the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had always called her
+Charmian, as she called Mrs. Mansfield Violet. But there had never been
+even a hint of genuine intimacy between the girl and the married woman,
+and they seldom met except in society, and then only spoke a few casual
+and unmeaning words. They had little in common, Charmian supposed,
+except their mutual knowledge of quantities of people and of a certain
+social life.</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath on <i>The Wanderer</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Charmian took the note to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney has suddenly taken a fancy to me, Madretta," she said.
+"Look at this!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield read the note and gave it back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to go?" she asked, looking at the girl, not without a still
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian twisted her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. You see, it's all very vague. I should like to be sure
+who's going. I think it's very reckless to take any chances on a yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath isn't going."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian raised her eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"But has she asked him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And he's refused. He told me so on Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite sure he won't go?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he wasn't going."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked lightly doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I go?" she said. "Would you mind if I did?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I care much either way. Why has she asked me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide? I daresay she likes you. And you wouldn't be unpleasant on a
+yacht, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends, I expect. You'd allow me to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I knew who the rest of the party were to be&mdash;definitely."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't answer till to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield did not feel sure what was Charmian's desire in the
+matter. She did not quite understand her child. She wondered, too, why
+Mrs. Shiffney had asked Charmian to go on the yacht, why she implied
+that Claude Heath might make one of the party when he had refused to go.
+It occurred to Mrs. Mansfield that Adelaide might mean to use Charmian
+as a lure to draw Heath into the expedition. But, if so, surely she
+quite misunderstood the acquaintanceship between them. Heath was
+her&mdash;Mrs. Mansfield's&mdash;friend. How often she had wished that Charmian
+and he were more at ease together, liked each other better. It was odd
+that Adelaide should fall into such a mistake. And yet what other
+meaning could her note have? She wrote as if the question of Heath's
+going or not were undecided.</p>
+
+<p>Was it undecided? Did Adelaide, with her piercing and clever eyes, see
+more clearly into Heath's nature than Mrs. Mansfield could?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had an extraordinary capacity for getting what she wanted.
+The hidden tragedy of her existence was that she was never satisfied
+with what she got. She wanted to draw Claude Heath out of his retirement
+into the big current of life by which she and her friends were buoyantly
+carried along through changing and brilliant scenes. His refusal had no
+doubt hardened a mere caprice into a strong desire. Mrs. Mansfield
+realized that Adelaide would not leave Heath alone now. The note to
+Charmian showed an intention not abandoned. But why should Adelaide
+suppose that Heath's acceptance might be dependent on anything done by
+Charmian?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield knew well, and respected, Mrs. Shiffney's haphazard
+cleverness, which, in matters connected with the worldly life, sometimes
+almost amounted to genius. That note to Charmian gave a new direction to
+her thoughts, set certain subtleties of the past which had vaguely
+troubled her in a new and stronger light. She awaited, with an interest
+that was not wholly pleasant, Charmian's decision of the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had been very casual in manner when she came to her mother with
+the surprising invitation. She was almost as casual on the following
+morning when she entered the dining-room where Mrs. Mansfield was
+breakfasting by electric light. For a gloom as of night hung over the
+Square, although it was ten o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been thinking it over, Charmian?" said her mother, as the girl
+sat languidly down.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother&mdash;lazily."</p>
+
+<p>She sipped her tea, looking straight before her with a cold and dreamy
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been active enough to arrive at any conclusion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I got up quite undecided, but now I think I'll say 'Yes,' if you don't
+mind. When I looked out of the window this morning I felt as if the
+Mediterranean would be nicer than this. There's only one thing&mdash;why
+don't you come, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't been asked."</p>
+
+<p>"And why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide's too modern to ask mothers and daughters together," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, smiling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Would you go if she asked you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Well, now the thing is to find out what the party is to be. Write
+the truth, and say you'll go if I know who's to be there and allow you
+to go. Adelaide knows quite well she has lots of friends I shouldn't
+care for you to yacht with. And it's much better to be quite frank about
+it. If Susan Fleet and Max go, you can go."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you are really the frankest person in London. And yet people
+love you&mdash;miracle-working mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned the conversation to other subjects and seemed to forget
+all about <i>The Wanderer</i>. But when breakfast was over, and she was alone
+before her little Chippendale writing-table, she let herself go to her
+excitement. Although she loved, even adored her mother, she sometimes
+acted to her. To do so was natural to Charmian. It did not imply any
+diminution of love or any distrust. It was but an instinctive assertion
+of a not at all uncommon type of temperament. The coldness and the
+dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great
+uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly
+understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told
+her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had
+supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs. Shiffney had invited her
+not for herself, but as a means of getting hold of Heath. Charmian was
+positive of that. Months ago, in Max Elliot's music-room, the girl had
+divined the impression made by Heath on Mrs. Shiffney, had seen the
+restless curiosity awake in the older woman. She had even noticed the
+tightening of Mrs. Shiffney's lips when she, Charmian, had taken Heath
+away from the little group by the fire, with that "when you've quite
+done with my only mother," which had been a tiny slap given to Mrs.
+Shiffney. And she had been sure that Mrs. Shiffney meant to know Heath.
+She had a great opinion of Mrs. Shiffney's social cleverness and
+audacity. Most girls who were much in London society had. She did not
+really like Mrs. Shiffney, or want to be intimate with her, but she
+thoroughly believed in her flair, and that was why the note had stirred
+in Charmian excitement and uncertainty. If Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Shiffney thought she
+saw something, surely it was there. She would not take shadow for
+substance.</p>
+
+<p>But might she not fire a shot in the dark on the chance of hitting
+something?</p>
+
+<p>"Why did she ask me instead of mother?" Charmian said to herself again
+and again. "If she had got mother to go Claude Heath would surely have
+gone. Why should he go because I go?"</p>
+
+<p>And then came the thought, "She thinks he may, perhaps thinks he will.
+Will he? Will he?"</p>
+
+<p>The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it
+came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even
+despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost
+reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs.
+Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the
+party. And then what would Heath do?</p>
+
+<p>As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs.
+Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."</p>
+
+<p>She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned
+herself to a period of patience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>By return there came a note hastily scribbled:</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.&mdash;A.
+S."</p>
+
+<p>But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing
+more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother,
+who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they
+never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and
+then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them.
+Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in,
+composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house,
+and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a
+conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he
+disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push
+everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one
+afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional
+acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or
+three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came
+into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by
+playing before sitting down to work.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard
+you playing, and knew you were in."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out
+at the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"In the drawing-room, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely
+ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it,
+looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon
+him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world
+with which he had nothing to do.</p>
+
+<p>"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with
+a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."</p>
+
+<p>Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly
+stiff.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He touched her powerful hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too
+bad of me."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man
+as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her.
+Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position,
+her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified?
+No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally.
+He felt savage, but he felt flattered.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.</p>
+
+<p>Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered
+chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.</p>
+
+<p>"May I give you some tea?"</p>
+
+<p>Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she
+regarded him as a boy.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."</p>
+
+<p>"But really, I am&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I
+know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with
+sudden reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little
+room! But you never sit in it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not often."</p>
+
+<p>"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said.
+"It's about the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm really so very sorry that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that
+I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate
+the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may
+think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."</p>
+
+<p>"I am tempted."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel
+just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet&mdash;she's a sort of
+chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course&mdash;Max
+Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps&mdash;if he can't come some charming man whom you'd
+delight in&mdash;and Charmian Mansfield."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:</p>
+
+<p>"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."</p>
+
+<p>"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over
+to Sicily and Tunis."</p>
+
+<p>She saw his eyes beginning to shine.</p>
+
+<p>"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's
+rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could
+leave the yacht at Alexandria&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid
+cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."</p>
+
+<p>"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are
+not to enjoy life!"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought
+artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the
+whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I
+suppose <i>English</i> artists are different. I often wonder whether they are
+wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the
+Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in
+Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do
+forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know
+it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the
+Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and moved her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in
+the stream of life."</p>
+
+<p>"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are
+foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.</p>
+
+<p>She saw anger in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are getting something&mdash;some sacred cantata&mdash;ready for one
+of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you
+mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis.
+Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I
+shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at&mdash;was it
+Worcester?&mdash;once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its
+feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing
+something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>He forced a very mirthless laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us
+talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I
+feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I
+can't accept it, unfortunately for me."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mal-au-c&oelig;ur?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mal-au-c&oelig;ur!</i>" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in the midst of something."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Puritan tradition?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my
+line, so I had better stick to it."</p>
+
+<p>"You are bathing in the Ganges?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were fixed upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful
+party."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature,
+and quite irresistible, though very Roman.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a
+solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll
+give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on
+Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No
+berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot,
+Paul Lane, and you&mdash;I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to
+me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really,
+though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get
+one!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but
+something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just
+then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of
+the world. As she got into her motor she said:</p>
+
+<p>"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"</p>
+
+<p>The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She
+was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He
+went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried
+to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in
+life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the
+spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at
+least with ardor&mdash;a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly,
+absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction
+had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive.
+Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> thought
+of him? But there was within him&mdash;and he knew it&mdash;a surely weak
+inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he
+was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature
+side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be
+what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept
+him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left
+the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.</p>
+
+<p>How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her
+persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential
+position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown
+man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She
+could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It
+was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something
+in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on
+his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told
+himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was
+less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes
+he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.</p>
+
+<p>He had till Sunday to decide.</p>
+
+<p>How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs.
+Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was
+really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused
+again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any
+woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or
+impolite.</p>
+
+<p>What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which
+kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the
+great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a
+coward, a rejector of life's offerings.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he had till Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were
+Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in
+the great world. They were very clan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>nish, were quite satisfied with
+their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to
+share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber.
+Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were,
+to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The
+Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented
+without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart
+from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from
+them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of
+them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt
+that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what
+satisfied them.</p>
+
+<p>Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or
+even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner
+circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never
+with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew
+comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who
+were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the
+journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position
+as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did
+not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the
+obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to
+climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of
+ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination
+toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the
+Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been
+happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence.
+Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it
+because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been
+agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it.
+How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold
+with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself
+stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in
+his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if
+poverty came!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies,
+the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and
+terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical
+education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great
+talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts
+labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the
+tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the
+will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the
+stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened
+instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because
+artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers,
+conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that
+should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a
+cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with
+the torn feathers of the fallen.</p>
+
+<p>The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great
+artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in
+his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting
+though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read
+them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime.
+Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions
+only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And
+angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed
+born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as
+the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions
+which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.</p>
+
+<p>He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently
+humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the
+fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.</p>
+
+<p>But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of
+strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the
+physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any
+combat.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> driven Claude
+forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the
+London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him
+instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he
+dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster
+with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the
+voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a
+groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to
+scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to
+rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant
+temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the
+yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own
+safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about
+Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his
+armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take
+him on its current whither it would?</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he
+might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He
+fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted,
+which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of
+this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs.
+Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it,
+though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.</p>
+
+<p>He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs.
+Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he
+read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now
+felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her
+he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were
+transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be
+hidden, something he wished were not in existence.</p>
+
+<p>Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial
+festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to
+him, to his talent! If he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> were merely provincial and destined to remain
+so because of his way of life!</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield,
+and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically
+he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings
+of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.</p>
+
+<p>He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself,
+even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in
+the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the
+house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began
+to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that
+Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian
+Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's
+account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him.
+They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together
+incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and
+felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly
+she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley
+Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not
+quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go
+on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian?
+Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too
+uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic,
+too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost
+dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped
+up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and
+did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite
+at his ease.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and
+took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he
+usually did, and in need of a real friend.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should it be anything special?"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed almost uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed.
+"Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or
+three things, if I may."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other
+evening? Did you&mdash;did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think
+it"&mdash;he paused&mdash;"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Provincial!"</p>
+
+<p>Heath was answered, but he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it alarming."</p>
+
+<p>"Alarming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."</p>
+
+<p>"Disturbed your mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Or my heart, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"But why? How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt
+very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had
+moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he
+were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to
+conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and
+despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner
+was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be
+reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who
+had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought,
+what anyone thought of his music.</p>
+
+<p>"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"It did really make a strong impression?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking
+care of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you have."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what you came to ask me?"</p>
+
+<p>Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking
+intensely alive.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I
+avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."</p>
+
+<p>He moved restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you had refused."</p>
+
+<p>"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian has been asked."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know,
+for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go
+to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite
+different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very
+much to&mdash;to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so
+on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of
+life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I
+wonder what the truth is?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:</p>
+
+<p>"Follow your instinct."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts
+than men."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently.
+"She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for
+anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that
+England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are
+hampered by tradition."</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! It can't be!"</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"St Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Francis didn't&mdash;if we are to talk of the saints."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you could guide me."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in
+her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly
+uncompromising.</p>
+
+<p>"Even if I could, don't let me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very
+strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my
+friend!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship&mdash;no woman, I mean&mdash;as
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a compliment I like!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs,
+her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she
+pushed the veil up rather languidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing in particular."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I?"</p>
+
+<p>She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she
+emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at
+girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of
+their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude,
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But
+you don't mind it."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's
+deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect
+you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable
+to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats
+and skirts."</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"</p>
+
+<p>She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very
+sure of herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your
+mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the following Sunday night at ten o'clock Max Elliot gave one of his
+musical parties.</p>
+
+<p>Delia had long since emerged from her rest cure, but was still suffering
+severely from its after-effects. It had completely broken her down, poor
+thing. The large quantities of "Marella" which she had imbibed had
+poisoned the system. The Swedish massage had made her bulky. And the
+prohibition as to letters had so severely shaken her nerve ganglions
+that she had been forced to seek the strengthening air of an expensive
+Swiss altitude, from which she had only just returned by way of Paris,
+where she had been nearly finished off by the dressmakers. However,
+being a woman of courage, she was down in peach color, with a pale
+turquoise-blue waist-belt, to receive her guests and to help to make
+things cheery. And she devoured condolences with an excellent appetite.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you do, never touch 'Marella'!" she was saying in her quick,
+light voice as Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian came into the music-room.
+"It's poison. It turns everything to I forget what, but something that
+develops the microbes instead of destroying them. I nearly died of it.
+Ah, Violet! Don't let Charmian be massaged by a Swede. It will ruin her
+figure. I've had to starve in Switzerland, or I couldn't have got into
+any of my new gowns. There's nothing so fatal as a rest cure. It sets
+every nerve on edge. The terrible monotony, and not knowing whether
+those one loves are alive or dead, whether the Government's gone out, or
+if there's a new King, or anything. Quite unnatural! It unfits one to
+face life and cope with one's friends. But Max would make me. Dear old
+Max! He's such a faddist. Men are the real faddists. I'll tell you about
+a marvellous new Arab remedy presently. I heard about it in Paris. We
+are going to have a lot of music in a minute. Yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke rapidly, looking about the room and seldom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> hearing what was
+said to her. Perpetual society had destroyed in her all continuity of
+mind. Ever since she could remember she had forgotten how to listen. She
+wanted to see, hear, know everybody, everything. Her mind hovered on the
+horizon, her restless and pale-blue eyes sought the farthest corners of
+the chamber to see what was happening in them, while she spoke to those
+within a foot or two of her. She laughed at jokes she did not catch or
+want to catch. She replied to questions she had divined by the
+expression on a face while she was glancing over the head it belonged
+to. She asked for information and travelled away ere it was given. Yet
+many people liked her. She was one of those very fair and small women
+who always look years younger than almost anyone really is, was full of
+vague charm, was kind, not stupid, and a good little thing, had two
+children and was only concentrated when at the dressmaker's or trying on
+hats.</p>
+
+<p>Max was devoted to her and rejoiced in spoiling her. He was one of those
+men who like to have a butterfly in the room with them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield never tried to talk to Delia in a crowd, and she and
+Charmian went on into the big room. It was already full of people, many
+of whom were sitting on chairs grouped about the dais on which was the
+piano, while others stood about, and still others looked down upon the
+throng from recessed balconies, gained from a hidden corridor with which
+the main staircase of the house communicated.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian saw Mrs. Shiffney not far off, talking and laughing with a
+great portrait painter, who looked like a burly farmer, and with a
+renowned operatic baritone, whose voice had left him in the prime of his
+life and who now gave singing lessons, and tried to fight down the
+genius which was in him and to which he could no longer give expression.
+He had a pale, large, and cruel face, and gray eyes that had become
+sinister since the disaster which had overtaken him. Near this group
+were three men, a musical critic, Paul Lane, and a famous English
+composer, prop and stay of provincial festivals. The composer was
+handsome, with merry eyes and a hearty laugh which seemed to proclaim
+"Sanity! Sanity! Sanity! Don't be afraid of the composer!" The critic
+was tall, gay, and ener<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>getic, and also looked&mdash;indeed, seemed to mean
+to look&mdash;a thorough good fellow who had a hatred of shams. Lane, pale
+and discontented, had an air of being out of place in their company.
+Pretty women were everywhere, and there were many young and very smart
+men. On a sofa close to Charmian a d&eacute;gag&eacute;e-looking Duchess was telling a
+"darkie" story to a lively and debonair writer, who was finding his
+story to cap it while he listened and smiled. Just beyond them were two
+impertinent and picturesquely dressed girls, sisters, whom Charmian knew
+intimately and met at almost every party she went to. One of them, who
+wore gold laurel leaves in her dark hair, made a little face at
+Charmian, which seemed to express a satirical welcome and the promise of
+sarcasm when they should be near enough to talk. The other was being
+prettily absurd with an excellent match. Close to the piano stood a very
+beautiful woman dressed in black, without jewels or gloves, who had an
+exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She
+was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never
+smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name
+was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist,
+married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max
+Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of
+musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Op&eacute;ra Comique, stood by
+him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him.
+She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost
+as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her
+out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She
+spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant
+and yet anxious eyes.</p>
+
+<p>As if in answer to Millie Deans's words, Max Elliot moved away with her,
+and took her through the throng to Mrs. Shiffney, who turned round with
+her movement of the shoulders as they came up. Charmian, watching, saw
+Mrs. Shiffney's gay and careless smile, the piercing light in her eyes
+as she looked swiftly at the singer, who faced her with a tragic and
+determined expression. The portrait painter stood by, with his rather
+protruding eyes fixed on Miss Deans.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Charmian glanced round at the crowd and spoke to one person and
+another she was seized again by her horror of being one of the unknown
+lives. She saw many celebrities. She yearned to be numbered among them.
+If she could even be as Mrs. Shiffney, an arbiter of taste, a setter of
+fashions in admiration; if she could see people look at her, as Millie
+Deans looked at Mrs. Shiffney, with the hard determination to win her
+over to their side in the battle of art, she thought she could be happy.
+But to be nobody, "that pretty little Charmian," "that graceful Charmian
+Mansfield, but she's not half as clever as her mother"! To-night she
+felt as if she could not bear it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had turned away from the singer, and now her eyes rested
+on Charmian. She nodded and smiled and made a beckoning motion with her
+left hand. But at this moment a singer and composer, half Spanish, half
+nobody knew what, who called himself Ferdinand Rades, sat down before
+the piano with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and struck a few soft
+chords, looking about him with a sort of sad and languid insolence and
+frowning till his thick eyebrows came down to make a penthouse roof
+above his jet black eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush&mdash;hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh&mdash;'sh&mdash;'sh! Monsieur
+Rades is going to sing."</p>
+
+<p>He bent to Rades.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Monsieur Rades will sing <i>Le Moulin</i>, and <i>Le Retour de
+Madame Blague</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way
+to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at
+Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his
+mouth, he sang <i>Le Moulin</i> at her, leaning back, swaying and moving his
+thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a
+delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the
+lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of
+bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sang <i>Le Retour
+de Madame Blague</i>, an outrageous trifle, full of biting esprit and
+insolent wit, with a refrain like the hum of Paris by night, and a long
+<i>bouche ferm&eacute;e</i> effect at the end, even they joined in the laughter and
+the applause, though with a certain reluctance, as if, in doing so, they
+half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> feared to descend into a gutter where slippery and slimy things
+made their abode.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning
+several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently
+boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time
+she was speaking to him.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Then sing <i>Petite Fille de Tombouctou</i>!" she exclaimed at last.</p>
+
+<p>And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "<i>Petite
+Fille de Tombouctou</i>."</p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel
+leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And
+Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's
+answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His
+accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the
+little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while
+he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in
+a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the
+curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes
+Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale,
+impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning
+to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently
+upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so
+little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when
+the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept
+for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that
+seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the
+provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the
+room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.</p>
+
+<p>After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's <i>Heart
+Ever Faithful</i>. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan
+Square.</p>
+
+<p>"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into
+God's air now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice
+at the nets.</p>
+
+<p>"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end!
+What a stroke of genius!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach&mdash;in the supper
+room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left
+the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian
+found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their
+father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been
+created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the
+beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend
+had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than
+ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid,
+hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and
+bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their
+mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying
+manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by
+wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective.
+But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to
+opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for
+himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of
+half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their
+mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided
+the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately,
+even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers, actresses,
+dancers, sculptors, writers, and painters, who were never received in
+any sort of good society on the Continent or in America. London's
+notorious carelessness in such matters was led gaily by their mother and
+by them. Their house in Park Lane was popularly known as "the ragbag,"
+and they were perpetually under the spell of some rage of the moment.
+Now they were twin Bacchantes, influenced by a Siberian dancer at the
+Palace; now curiously Eastern, captured by a Nautch girl whom they had
+come to know in Paris. For a time they were Japanese, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+Criterion opened its doors to a passionate doll from Yokohama, who
+became their bosom friend. Italy touched them with the lovely hands of
+La Divina Carlotta, our lady of tears from a slum of Naples. The
+Sicilians turned them to fire and the Swedish singers to snow. At this
+moment Margot was inclined to be classic, caught by a plastic poseuse
+from Athens, who, attired solely in gold-leaf, was giving exhibitions at
+the Hippodrome to the despair of Mrs. Grundy. And Kit was waiting for a
+new lead and marking time in the newest creations from Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, come and sit down for just a moment! Run away and play, Lord
+Mark!"</p>
+
+<p>"With whom?" said a handsome boy plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>"With Jenny Smythe, with Lady Dolly, anyone who can play pretty. Come
+back in ten minutes and I'll be bothered with you again&mdash;perhaps. Let's
+sit here, Charmian. Wasn't the <i>Fille</i> too perfect? But the Bach was
+like the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. Max shouldn't have
+allowed it. What do you think of my gold gown?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Greeks knew everything and we know nothing. This dress hangs in
+such a calm way that one can't be anything but classic in it. Since I've
+known the Persephone I've learnt how to live. You must go to the
+Hippodrome. But what's all this about your going yachting with the
+Adelaide and an extraordinary Cornish genius? What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>The last words came out in a suddenly business-like and almost self-made
+voice, and Margot's deep eyes, full hitherto of a conscious calm,
+supposed to be Greek, abruptly darted questioning fires which might have
+sprung from a modern hussy.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you like him so much?" continued Margot, before Charmian had time to
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You're making a great mistake," said Charmian, with airy dignity. "I
+was only surprised to hear that Claude Heath was coming. I didn't know
+it. I understood he had refused to come. He always refuses everything.
+How did you hear of him?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Adelaide has been talking about him. She says he's a genius who
+hates the evil world, and will only know her and your mother, and that
+he's going with her and you and Max Elliot to the Greek Isles on one
+condition&mdash;that nobody else is to be asked and that he is to be
+introduced to no one. If it's really the Greek Isles, I think I ought to
+be taken. I told the Adelaide so, but she said Claude Heath would rather
+die than have a girl like me with him on the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"So he really has accepted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently. Now you don't look pleased."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Heath's Madretta's friend, not mine," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Then your mother should go to Greece. Why did the Adelaide ask
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you, Margot, I was amazed at being asked."</p>
+
+<p>"But you accepted."</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to get out of this weather."</p>
+
+<p>"With a Cornish genius?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Heath only looks at middle-aged married women," said Charmian. "I
+think he has a horror of girls. He and I don't get on at all."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Plain and gaunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Is his music really so wonderful?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never heard a note of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>With difficulty Charmian kept a displeased look out of her face as she
+answered sweetly:</p>
+
+<p>"Once, I think. But she has said very little about it."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the tragic mask of Miss Deans was seen in a doorway, and
+Margot got up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's that darling Millie from Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Millie Deans, the only real actress on the operatic stage. Until you've
+seen her in <i>Cr&ecirc;pe de Chine</i> you've never seen opera as it ought to be.
+Millie! Millie!"</p>
+
+<p>She went rather aggressively toward Miss Deans, forgetting her calm gown
+for the moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So Claude Heath had accepted. Charmian concluded this from Margot
+Drake's remarks. No doubt Mrs. Shiffney had received his answer that
+day. She loved giving people the impression that she was adventurous and
+knew strange and wonderful beings who wouldn't know anyone else. So she
+had not been able to keep silence about Claude Heath and the Greek
+Isles. Charmian's heart bounded. The peculiar singing of Ferdinand
+Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by
+the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination.
+Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed
+after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable
+of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was
+accustomed. There was much conventionality in her, though she did not
+know it. "The Brighton tradition" was not a mere phrase in her mother's
+mouth. Laughingly said it contained, nevertheless, particles of truth.
+But at this moment it seemed far away from Charmian, quite foreign to
+her. The Greek Isles and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Millie Deans had stepped upon the dais, accompanied by a very thin,
+hectic French boy, who sat down at the piano. But she did not seem
+inclined to sing. She looked round, glanced at the hectic boy, folded
+her hands in front of her, and waited. Max Elliot approached with his
+genial air and spoke to her. She answered, putting her dead-white face
+close to his. He also looked round the room, then hurried out. There was
+a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" people murmured, turning their heads.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Lane bent down and said to the d&eacute;gag&eacute;e Duchess:</p>
+
+<p>"She won't sing till Mr. Brett, of the opera, comes."</p>
+
+<p>His lips curled in a sarcastic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"What a fuss they all make about themselves!" returned the Duchess.
+"It's a hard face."</p>
+
+<p>"Millie's? She's in a violent temper. You'll see; until Mr. Brett comes
+she won't open her mouth."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Deans stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her
+and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands
+over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a
+laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a
+small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the
+stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney
+to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door.
+Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to
+Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking
+sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was in one of the balconies now with a young man. She saw her
+mother opposite to her with Sir Hilary Burnington, looking down on the
+singer and the crowd, and she thought her mother must have heard
+something very sad. Millie Deans sang an aria of Mozart in a fine,
+steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang two <i>morceaux</i> from the
+filmy opera, <i>Cr&ecirc;pe de Chine</i>, by a young Frenchman, which she had
+helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett,
+commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room
+beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius
+are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then
+torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior
+to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because
+they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take
+her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman
+sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the
+stout man leaning against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?</p>
+
+<p>The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the
+humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck.
+She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite
+unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all
+of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never
+again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest
+relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath.
+She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young aus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>terity, his
+curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking
+now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit
+him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if
+they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any
+man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.</p>
+
+<p>There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces
+below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly
+judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful
+sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to
+sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of
+setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down.
+Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that
+the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often
+there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to
+attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the
+floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg
+Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door.
+Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange
+color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings
+of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a
+dead man.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog,
+looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be
+detached.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished
+violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."</p>
+
+<p>"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> critic
+standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice
+and the&mdash;the what you may call it all wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and
+shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic,
+puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a
+forced-up mezzo."</p>
+
+<p>Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Charming! No, I haven't heard <i>Cr&ecirc;pe de Chine</i>. I don't care much for
+Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really
+going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us
+<i>Enigme</i>." Mr. Brett had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie
+Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began <i>Enigme</i> in his
+most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris
+that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a <i>diseur</i>. No one would
+dream of putting him in a programme with me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my
+programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose
+education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a
+very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you
+all here, is as ignorant of music as&mdash;as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I
+say!"</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You
+will come back, you&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in
+his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric
+brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.</p>
+
+<p>Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness.
+Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss
+Deans did not appeal to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a
+similar ennui when the American was singing.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who,
+with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of
+Miss Deans.</p>
+
+<p>And again her mind went to Claude Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said
+within her.</p>
+
+<p>And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in
+the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of
+her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to
+leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition
+that nobody is ever to hear. And&mdash;I forget what else. But there were
+four sides of excuses."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know
+when we start."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes pierced Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden
+on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."</p>
+
+<p>That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> had locked the
+door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:</p>
+
+<p>"If only Rades had not sung <i>Petite Fille de Tombouctou</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would
+never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such
+music was cruel when life went wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that
+from the first she had hated Claude Heath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A fortnight later <i>The Wanderer</i> lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers.
+But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred
+Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over
+to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at
+the H&ocirc;tel St. George at Mustapha Sup&eacute;rieur.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough,
+and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got
+out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently,
+volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great
+many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one
+else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to
+her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little.
+And she had the great advantage in life&mdash;so, at least, she considered
+it&mdash;of being a theosophist.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again
+<i>Petite Fille de Tombouctou</i> she had felt she must get out of Europe, if
+only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian
+would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's
+refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in
+England in two or three weeks. So <i>The Wanderer</i> had gone round to
+Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt
+to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had
+not married, and at the age of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> forty-nine and nine months she was
+sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some
+people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance
+was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her
+collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat.
+All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but
+she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were
+never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a
+passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if
+they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were
+rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were
+eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were,
+trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could
+never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead,
+and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven&mdash;she had really been
+married at sixteen&mdash;was living as companion at Folkestone with an old
+lady of eighty-two.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally
+well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree,"
+and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly
+advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions"
+which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was
+liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about,
+had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just
+herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from
+every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many
+said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She
+possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a
+snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney
+and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her
+mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted,"
+and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services
+she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though
+she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she
+had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this
+by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent
+accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how
+to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When
+looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train
+sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a
+perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed
+totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the
+meaning of the word shyness.</p>
+
+<p>When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian
+suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation&mdash;alone above
+Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed
+like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney
+always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was
+in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but
+they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek
+public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long
+Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.</p>
+
+<p>"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The
+assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a
+sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of
+general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under
+sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when
+Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything
+this afternoon?" she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't
+bother about me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and
+business-like manner.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But
+she did not.</p>
+
+<p>On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking
+lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> buffers talking about
+politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on,
+descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged
+garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was
+conscious of a feeling of greater ease.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm
+trees by a little table.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>They sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"</p>
+
+<p>"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares
+Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought
+so she found we must go away."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her
+odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to
+tumble out.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it&mdash;" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I was going to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss
+Fleet, composedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Something of that sort perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as
+Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."</p>
+
+<p>"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity
+oneself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam
+of the sun on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many
+things?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be
+fifty almost directly."</p>
+
+<p>"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it
+quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of
+course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian put her chin in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know what I thought?"</p>
+
+<p>"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her
+chin.</p>
+
+<p>"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!"
+she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a
+moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a
+<i>vieille fille</i> who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man
+who didn't want to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Fleet was smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think
+men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."</p>
+
+<p>"How calm you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could never be like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps when you are fifty."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of
+caution very rare in her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was
+entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had
+principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed
+in a religion&mdash;the Protestant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> religion it happened to be. And yet&mdash;yes,
+certainly&mdash;she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even
+felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything
+else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To
+"go on" at all, ever&mdash;how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some
+minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.</p>
+
+<p>An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a
+motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden.
+The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where <i>The
+Wanderer</i> lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going
+to be here again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it
+for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I did once."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you
+have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or
+two?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say I do."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said
+Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on
+board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear
+old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."</p>
+
+<p>One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary!
+And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan
+Fleet?</p>
+
+<p>"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm
+lucky."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be as you are."</p>
+
+<p>After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> going to be
+fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the
+following afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better
+we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are
+several that are beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry
+that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly
+now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last
+frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion.
+Algiers affected her somewhat as the <i>Petite Fille de Tombouctou</i> had
+affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it
+to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude
+Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's
+party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical
+gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble
+pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains
+singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and
+deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by
+night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I
+am nothing to him!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were
+violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected.
+She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known
+perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is
+done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with
+my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!"
+besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim,
+squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to
+be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of
+beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a
+lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and
+not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body
+meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere
+specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But
+what can I do? How will it end?" She longed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> to do something active, to
+make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness.
+Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to
+dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but
+when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she
+began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of
+whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively
+at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her
+revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated.
+"She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!"
+thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In
+self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge
+of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance
+of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there
+before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show
+Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure
+gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent
+preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of
+the hill over which the houses of Mustapha Sup&eacute;rieur are scattered. Here
+no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors
+buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and
+laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world
+that was so near.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by
+Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven
+banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and
+flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island,
+just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm,
+and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the
+delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm&mdash;they were
+the island, round which slept greenish-yellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> water guarded by the
+azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path
+where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses,
+making a half-moon.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin
+sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it
+by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained
+by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated
+Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in
+quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades
+in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
+It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people,
+to suggest to them&mdash;what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange
+isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which
+they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One
+longed to sail away, to land on it&mdash;and then?</p>
+
+<p>Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up
+the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then
+travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just
+at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet
+immediately.</p>
+
+<p>On the shore of the lake there was a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm
+very unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought,
+connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some
+strange way that seemed inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat
+tailor-made lap.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for that," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes
+it so much worse. I didn't know&mdash;till I came here. At least, I didn't
+really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I
+wasn't so dreadfully wretched."</p>
+
+<p>A sort of wave of desperation&mdash;it seemed a hot wave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>&mdash;surged through
+Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and
+receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that
+nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give
+Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you mean a man."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds&mdash;oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have
+to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care
+about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I
+know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care
+for&mdash;perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will
+never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will
+never let me."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply
+because it seems to me that one class never really understands another,
+not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the
+yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of
+her companion's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then
+that he wasn't coming."</p>
+
+<p>"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a great friend of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you
+think of me?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost
+thought I hated him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's
+mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet&mdash;or may I
+call you Susan to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, and to-morrow, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?
+Do you think I&mdash;am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous
+idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all
+the other girls&mdash;you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched
+Susan Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I
+ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for
+him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he likes you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I
+have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we
+know a thing by instinct&mdash;don't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous,
+who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius,
+I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he
+has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the
+world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know,
+nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have
+anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and
+pined to be extraordinary!"</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinary? In what way?"</p>
+
+<p>"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't
+endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately&mdash;quite
+lately&mdash;I've begun to realize what I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> be, do. I could be the
+perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not laughing."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've
+always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've
+made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm
+at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social
+capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.
+And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would
+feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man <i>manqu&eacute;</i> because of a
+sort of kink in his temperament. And&mdash;I know that I could get rid of
+that kink <i>if</i>&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be
+madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed,
+almost fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."</p>
+
+<p>"When I look at that island&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said,
+in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:</p>
+
+<p>"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go
+to rust."</p>
+
+<p>Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a
+dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She
+was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her
+intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day,
+when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to
+me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has
+come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of
+things&mdash;here."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha
+Ali, walking toward the hotel&mdash;when he was just under that arch of pink
+roses. The horn of a motor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> sounded in the road, and the white dust flew
+up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all
+an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt&mdash;I shall be here
+again with <i>him</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems
+to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they
+knew, and told me."</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn
+through that man, and to teach him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"</p>
+
+<p>Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with
+possibility.</p>
+
+<p>"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."</p>
+
+<p>"Learn! Why, I've just told you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be
+expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman
+had astonished her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" she almost blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I
+think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone
+else."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect
+her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian
+refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other
+habitu&eacute;s of the house, because she really liked him much better than she
+liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had
+she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which
+made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian
+was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she
+had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in
+the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking
+defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her
+voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her
+while Charmian was away.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian in love with Claude Heath!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if
+she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her
+affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to
+make her happy.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in
+it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.
+Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life
+led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led
+by her?</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very
+well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was
+beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she
+wished very much to be more clear about that.</p>
+
+<p>Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the
+other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or
+belonged to sets which overlapped and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> intermingled. They were men who
+were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by,
+her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were
+thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking
+an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a
+certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in
+Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his
+individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well
+that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she
+feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence
+over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to
+its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that
+belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many
+clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were
+gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known,
+men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To
+several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.</p>
+
+<p>But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.
+His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in
+Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had
+excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having
+perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the
+farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto
+she had cultivated the friendship with Heath without arri&egrave;re pens&eacute;e. Now
+she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her
+wish to study Heath.</p>
+
+<p>The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about
+Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she
+liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense
+mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social
+ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She
+compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were
+not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost
+fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies
+accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the
+desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to
+make ruins and dust.</p>
+
+<p>Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was
+alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he
+loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.
+Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away
+from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung
+to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.</p>
+
+<p>They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery,
+in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was
+orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear
+perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the
+conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element
+of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him
+back from worlds he desired to enter.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two parts of the not long concert there was a pause. During
+it Mrs. Mansfield and Claude left their seats and strolled about in the
+corridor, talking. They were both of them heated by music and ready for
+mental intimacy. But they did not discuss the works they had just heard.
+Combinations of melody and harmony turned them toward life and humanity.
+The voices of the great orchestral family called them toward the dim
+avenues where in the shadows destiny wanders. Some music enlarges the
+borders, sets us free in regions whose confines we cannot perceive. They
+spoke of aims, of ideals, of goals which are very far off.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine music gives me the conception of great distances," Mrs. Mansfield
+said presently. "It makes me feel that the soul is born for travel."</p>
+
+<p>Heath stood still.</p>
+
+<p>"The winding white road over the hills that loses itself in the
+vagueness which, in a picture, only some shade of blue can suggest. The
+road! The road!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood leaning against the wall. As she stood by him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Mrs. Mansfield
+felt strangely, almost cruelly, young. It was as if student days had
+come for them both. She could hardly believe that her hair was
+snow-white, and that Charmian had been going to parties for nearly four
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst of it is," Claude continued, "that it is so hard sometimes
+not to wander from it."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me you never wander."</p>
+
+<p>"Because I know that, if I did, I should probably never come back to the
+road. What you perhaps consider my strength takes its rise, I believe,
+in my knowledge of my weakness. Things that are right for others aren't
+right for me."</p>
+
+<p>No one was near them. The music seemed to have abolished for the moment
+the difference in age between them. Claude spoke to her as he had seldom
+spoken to her before, with an almost complete unreserve of manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know why some men enter the cloister?" he continued. "It's
+because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines.
+Mullion House is my cloister. I haven't got the power of apportioning my
+life with sweet reason, so much work, so much play, so much retirement,
+so much society, so much restraint, so much license. I could never
+pursue my art through wildness, as so many men have done, women too. I
+don't believe I could even stick to it in the midst of the ordinary life
+of pleasures and distractions. It's like a bone that I have to seize and
+take away into a cave where no one can see me gnaw it. Isn't that a
+beastly simile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that why you won't go to Max Elliot's, that you refused Mrs.
+Shiffney? Do you think that the sort of thing which inspires many
+men&mdash;the audience, let us say, watching the combat&mdash;would unnerve you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance,
+or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted
+irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me
+which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but it's
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you're so uncompromising."</p>
+
+<p>"That's my armor. I daren't wear ordinary clothes, lest every arrow
+should pierce me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A bell sounded. They returned to the concert room. When the second part
+was over Heath looked at Mrs. Mansfield and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?"</p>
+
+<p>They were in the midst of the crowd passing out. Women were winding soft
+things about their necks, men were buttoning up their coats. For a March
+wind was about in the great city. She returned his look and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You guessed! It's the gallery, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to all
+this fun. Isn't it amazing what a groove one lives in? Berkeley Square
+shadows the whole of my life I begin to believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say the motor is waiting!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go to some preposterous place&mdash;to the Monico?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where you like. It's just tea time, or coffee time."</p>
+
+<p>They walked to the Monico in the March wind, and went in with a group of
+Italians, passing the woman who sells foreign papers, and seeing names
+that transported them to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Berlin. A vastness
+of marble contained a myriad of swarthy strangers, releasing souls
+astoundingly foreign in vivid gesture and talk. They had coffee with
+cream like a burgeoning cloud floating airily on the top.</p>
+
+<p>"The only word to describe the effect of all this upon me is spree,"
+said Mrs. Mansfield. "I am out on the spree."</p>
+
+<p>"Capital! And if I stepped right in to your sort of life," said Heath,
+"would it have the same kind of effect upon me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it could. It's too conscious, too critical, too
+fastidious. There's nothing fastidious in a spree. I like the March wind
+outside, too&mdash;the thought of it."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her mind went to Charmian and Algiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian's in the sun," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Directly she said this Heath looked slightly self-conscious.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard from her?"</p>
+
+<p>"This morning. She has made great friends with Susan Fleet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a woman we all like, who often helps Adelaide Shiffney with
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"We all like," he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>clich&eacute;</i>! And indeed I scarcely know Susan Fleet. You see what an
+absurd close borough I live in, have always lived in. And I never
+thoroughly realized that till I met you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I live in loneliness, outside of it all, of everything almost."</p>
+
+<p>Lightly she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"With Mrs. Shiffney and others holding open the door, holding up the
+lamp, and imploring you to come in, to come right in as they say on the
+other side of the Atlantic."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish me to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I wish. But I am dissatisfied."</p>
+
+<p>He frowned, moving his chair, lit a cigarette, pushed away his coffee
+cup.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it like at Algiers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very beautiful, Charmian says. Adelaide and the others have gone off to
+a desert place called Bou-Saada&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bou-Saada!" he said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"And Charmian and Susan Fleet are up on the hill at Mustapha Sup&eacute;rieur.
+They've left the yacht for a few days. They are visiting Arab villas and
+exploring tropical gardens."</p>
+
+<p>She watched him and sipped her coffee. All the student feeling had gone
+from her. And now she was deeply aware of the difference between her age
+and Heath's.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they won't be back for a good while," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I expect them in a week or two."</p>
+
+<p>"So soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide is always in a hurry, and this was only to be quite a short
+trip."</p>
+
+<p>"Once out there how can they come away so soon? I should want to stay
+for months. If I once began really to travel there would never be an end
+to it, unless I were not my own master."</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite extraordinary how you master yourself," Mrs. Mansfield said.
+"You are a dragon to yourself, and what a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> fierce unyielding dragon!
+It's a fine thing to have such a strong will."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! But if I let it go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you ever will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said with a sort of deep sadness. "On one side's the will. But
+on the other side there's an absurd impulsiveness. But don't let's talk
+any more of me. Do tell me some more about Algiers and your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>When Heath left her that day Mrs. Mansfield said to herself, "If
+Charmian really does care for him he doesn't know it."</p>
+
+<p>What were Heath's feelings toward Charmian she could not divine. She was
+unconscious of any desire to baffle her on Heath's part, and was
+inclined to think that he was so wrapped up in the rather solitary life
+he had planned out for himself, and in his art, was so detached from the
+normal preoccupations of strong and healthy young men, that Charmian
+meant very little, perhaps nothing at all, to him. She had noted, of
+course, the slightly self-conscious look which had come into Heath's
+face when she had mentioned Charmian, but she explained that to herself
+easily enough. Her mention of Charmian in the sun had recalled to him
+the persistence of Mrs. Shiffney, which he knew she was aware of. In
+such matters he was like a sensitive boy. He had the peculiar delicacies
+of the nervously constituted artist, which seem very ridiculous to the
+average man, but not to the discerning woman. Mrs. Mansfield felt almost
+sure that his self-consciousness arose not from memories of Charmian,
+but of Adelaide Shiffney. And she supposed that he was probably quite
+indifferent to Charmian. It was better so. Although she believed that it
+was wise for most men to marry, and not very late in life, she excepted
+Heath from her theory. She could not "see" him married. She could not
+pick out any girl or woman whom she knew, and say: "That would be the
+wife for him." Evidently he was one of the exceptional men for whom the
+normal conditions are not intended. She thought again of his music, and
+found a reason there. But then she remembered yellow-haired Fan. He was
+at home with a child, why not with a wife and child of his own? She put
+aside the problem, but did not resign the thought, "In any case Charmian
+would be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> wrong woman for him to marry." And when she said that to
+herself she was thinking solely of the welfare of Heath. Because he was
+a man, and had been unreserved with her, Mrs. Mansfield instinctively
+desired to protect his life. She had the feeling, "I understand him
+better than others." In a chivalrous nature understanding breeds a
+strong sense of obligation. Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she had duties
+toward Heath. During the two weeks which elapsed before Charmian's
+return from Algiers she thought more about his future than about her
+child's. But she was a very feminine woman and, to her, a man's future
+always seemed to matter more than a woman's.</p>
+
+<p>Heath, too, had his great talent. That might need protection in the
+future. Mrs. Mansfield did not believe in an untroubled life for such a
+man as Heath. There was something disturbing both in his personality and
+in his music which seemed to her to preclude the possibility of his
+dwelling always in peace. But she hoped he would be true to his
+instinct, to the strange instinct which kept him now in a sort of
+cloistered seclusion. She knew he had friends, acquaintances, made
+during his time at the College of Music, through the introductions he
+had brought to London from Cornwall, through family connections. Human
+intercourse must be part of every life. But she was glad, very glad,
+that neither Mrs. Shiffney nor Max Elliot had persuaded him into the
+world where artists are handed on and on till they "know everybody." His
+words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they
+feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with
+her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued
+their art through wildness&mdash;Heath's expression&mdash;with an inflexibility
+quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the
+onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians
+born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics
+did not exist in Heath, she thought. She pondered. He was surely not a
+Bohemian. And yet he did not belong to the other race so noticeable in
+England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives
+in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> publicity, who produce
+in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane
+even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street
+thinks, who occasionally go to a lev&eacute;e, and have set foot on summer days
+in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be dubbed
+with a name. Was he a Bohemian who, for his health's sake, could not
+live in Bohemia? She remembered the crucifix standing in front of the
+piano where he passed so many hours, the strange and terrible words he
+had chosen to set to music, the setting he had given them. It was an
+uncompromising nature, an uncompromising talent. And yet&mdash;there was the
+other side. There was something ready to rush out to satisfy
+expectation.</p>
+
+<p>She was deeply interested in Heath.</p>
+
+<p>About ten days after the "spree" at the Monico she received a telegram
+from Marseilles&mdash;"Starting to-night, home the day after to-morrow;
+love.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Charmian</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Heath dropped in that day, and Mrs. Mansfield mentioned the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian will be back on Thursday. I told you Adelaide Shiffney would
+be in a hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they are not going on to the Greek Isles," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not this time."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him and thought he was looking rather sad.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come and dine on Thursday night just with me and Charmian?"
+she said. "If she is tired with the journey from Paris you may be alone
+with me. If not, she can tell us about her little African experiences."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. Yes, I should like to come very much!"</p>
+
+<p>The strangely imaginative expression, which made his rather plain face
+almost beautiful, shone in his eyes and seemed to shed a flicker of
+light about his brow and lips, as he added:</p>
+
+<p>"I have travelled so little that to me there is something almost
+wonderful in the arrival of someone from Africa. Even the name comes to
+me always like fire and black mystery. Last night, just before I went to
+bed, I was reading Chateaubriand, and I came across a passage that kept
+me awake for hours."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She leaned a little forward, ready to be fascinated as evidently he had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>"He is writing of Napoleon, and says of him something like this."</p>
+
+<p>Heath paused, looked down, seemed to make an effort, and continued, with
+his eyes turned away from Mrs. Mansfield:</p>
+
+<p>"'His enemies, fascinated, seek him and do not see him. He hides himself
+in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the
+sun to escape from the searching eyes of the dazzled hunters.' Isn't
+that simply gorgeous? It set my imagination galloping. 'As the lion of
+the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun'&mdash;by Jove!" He got up.
+"I was out of England last night. And to think that Miss Charmian is
+actually arriving from Africa!"</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield said to herself: "He's a child, too!"
+And she felt restless and troubled. Na&iuml;vet&eacute; leads men of genius into
+such unsuitable regions sometimes. It was rather wonderful that he could
+feel as he did about Africa and refuse to go to Africa. For Adelaide
+would have taken him anywhere. Would Charmian bring back with her
+something of the wonder of the East? Mrs. Mansfield felt for a moment as
+if she were going to welcome a stranger in her child. The feeling
+returned to her on the Thursday afternoon, when she was waiting for
+Charmian's arrival in her writing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was due at Charing Cross at three-twenty-five. She ought to be
+in Berkeley Square about four, unless the train was very crowded, and
+there was a long delay at the Customs. Four o'clock chimed from the
+Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece, and she had not arrived. Mrs.
+Mansfield was conscious of a restlessness almost amounting to
+nervousness. She got up from her chair, laid down the book she had been
+reading, and moved slowly about the room.</p>
+
+<p>How would Charmian receive the news that Claude Heath was to dine with
+them that night? Would she be too tired by the journey to dine? She was
+a bad sailor. Perhaps the sea in the Channel had been rough. If so, she
+would arrive not looking her best. Mrs. Mansfield had invited Heath
+because she wished to be sure at the first possible moment whether
+Charmian was in love with him or not. And she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> positive that now,
+consciously alert and suspicious, if she saw the two together even for a
+short time she would know.</p>
+
+<p>And if she knew that it was so, that Charmian had set her affections on
+Heath&mdash;what then?</p>
+
+<p>She resolved not to look beyond the day. But as the moments passed, and
+she waited, her mind, like a thing beyond control, began to occupy
+itself with that question. The distant hoot of a motor startled her.
+Although their motor had a horn exactly the same as a thousand others
+she knew at once that Charmian was entering the Square. Half a minute
+later, standing in the doorway of her sitting-room, she heard the door
+bell and the footsteps of Lassell, the butler. Impulsively she went to
+the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!" she called. "Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>"My only mother!" came up a voice from below.</p>
+
+<p>She saw Charmian pushing up her veil over her three-cornered
+travelling-hat with a bright red feather.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you? Oh, there!"</p>
+
+<p>She came up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a crossing! I'm an unlucky girl! Remedies are no use. Dearest!"</p>
+
+<p>She put two light hands on her mother's shoulders and kissed her twice
+with lips which were rather cold. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked
+unusually haggard and restless. An atmosphere of excitement seemed to
+surround her like an aura, Mrs. Mansfield thought. She put her arm
+through her mother's.</p>
+
+<p>"Tea with you, and then I think I must go to bed. How nice to be in my
+own dear bed again! I thought of my pillows on board with a yearning
+that came from the soul, I'm sure. Of course, we left the yacht at
+Marseilles. The yachting there was such a talk about resolved itself
+into the two crossings. I wasn't sorry, for we never saw a calm sea
+except from the shore."</p>
+
+<p>"No? What a shame! Sit here."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian threw herself down with a movement that was very young and
+began taking off her long gloves. As her thin, pretty hands came out of
+them, Mrs. Mansfield bent down and kissed her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear child! How nice to have you safe home!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a silly question to ask your only mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"This chair makes me feel exactly how tired I am. It tells me."</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your hat."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I?" She put up her hands, but she left the hat where it was, and
+her mother did not ask why.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Adelaide back?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I left her glued to Paris. I crossed with Susan Fleet. Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>She rested her head on the back of the big chair, and shut her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Only tea. I can't eat!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if I'd been away for centuries, as if London must have
+changed."</p>
+
+<p>"It hasn't."</p>
+
+<p>"And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, I've shed my nature, as you see!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you think I've shed mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes wandered about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Africa really has made a great difference?"</p>
+
+<p>The alert look that Mrs. Mansfield knew so well came into Charmian's
+face despite her fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"Who thought it would?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've never been out of Europe before."</p>
+
+<p>"You did?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be natural if I had fancied it might?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. But it was only the very edge of Africa. I never went beyond
+Mustapha Sup&eacute;rieur. I didn't even want to go. I wonder if Susan Fleet
+did."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I didn't think very much about it. But I begin to wonder
+now. I think she's so unselfish that perhaps she makes other people
+selfish."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You made great friends, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I think she's rather wonderful. She's very unlike other women. She
+seemed actually glad to give me the address of the place where she gets
+her coats and skirts. If Theosophy made more women like that I should
+wish it to spread like cholera in the alleys of Naples. Madre, don't
+mind me! I was really ill coming across. My head feels all light and
+empty."</p>
+
+<p>She put up her hands to her temples.</p>
+
+<p>"It's as if everything in my poor little brain-box had been shaken
+about."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child! And I've been very inconsiderate."</p>
+
+<p>"Inconsiderate? How?"</p>
+
+<p>"About to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't accepted a party for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't so bad as that. But I've invited someone to dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Charmian looked genuinely surprised. "Not Aunt Kitty!"</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Kitty was a sister of Mrs. Mansfield's whom Charmian disliked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no&mdash;Claude Heath."</p>
+
+<p>After a slight but perceptible pause, Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Heath. Oh, you asked him for to-night before you knew I should be
+here. I see."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't. I thought he would like to hear about your African
+experiences. I asked him after your telegram came."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian got up slowly, and stood where she could see herself in a
+mirror without seeming intent on looking in the glass. Her glance to it
+was very swift and surreptitious, and she spoke, to cover it perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've got very little to tell about Algiers that could
+interest Mr. Heath. Would you mind very much if I gave it up and dined
+in bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do just as you like. It was stupid of me to ask him. I suppose I acted
+on impulse without thinking first."</p>
+
+<p>"What time is dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eight as usual."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be
+with you again, dearest Madre!"</p>
+
+<p>She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just
+then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her
+bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her
+hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her
+dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"I look dreadful!" was her comment.</p>
+
+<p>Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed
+herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting,
+and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange
+events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to
+help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as
+one of these instruments.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude
+Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the
+evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her
+mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs.
+Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter.
+Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from
+child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"</p>
+
+<p>But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not
+mean to go down to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better!
+Look better! Look better!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the
+glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation
+in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably
+of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the
+"Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely
+told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in
+expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more
+repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.</p>
+
+<p>Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the
+Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage
+with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that
+conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry
+Claude Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is
+to learn through that man, and to teach him."</p>
+
+<p>The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to
+Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs
+through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the
+great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its
+fellows, "I shall be here again with him."</p>
+
+<p>Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a
+human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in
+the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with
+thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan
+Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She
+had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use
+her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring
+us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of
+romance and wonder.</p>
+
+<p>But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined,
+too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But
+then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.</p>
+
+<p>For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But,
+oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at
+Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!</p>
+
+<p>Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls
+who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought
+them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and
+powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face,
+and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it
+in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Softly she pulled out a drawer.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past seven there was a knock at the door. She opened it and saw
+her maid.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, miss, Mrs. Mansfield wishes to know whether you feel
+rested enough to dine downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do. Just tell mother, and then come back, please, Halton."</p>
+
+<p>When Halton came Charmian watched her almost as a cat does a mouse, and
+presently surprised an inquiring look that degenerated into a look of
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Halton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, miss. Which dress will you wear?"</p>
+
+<p>So Halton had guessed, or had suspected&mdash;there was not much difference
+between the two mental processes.</p>
+
+<p>"The green one I took on the yacht."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Or the&mdash;wait a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the green one."</p>
+
+<p>When the maid had taken the dress out Charmian said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> "Why did you look
+at me as you did just now, Halton? I wish to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I have put something on."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"I looked so sea-sick&mdash;yellow. No one wants to look yellow."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm sure, miss."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want&mdash;come and help me, Halton. I believe you know things I
+don't."</p>
+
+<p>Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to
+Charmian, and she did know things unknown to her young mistress.
+Trusted, she was ready to reveal them, and Charmian went downstairs at
+three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes
+before that hour.</p>
+
+<p>Although she was quite, quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude
+Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she
+was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her
+hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of
+shame had a part.</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at
+him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed
+to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer,
+weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust,
+far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange
+little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had
+a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own
+brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to
+prompt it.</p>
+
+<p>But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For
+his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He
+was looking for Africa, but she did not know it.</p>
+
+<p>Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed
+change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed
+before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it
+made an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness
+within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her
+face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything,
+about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you
+are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added:</p>
+
+<p>"Your rest has done you good."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You
+mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You
+must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this
+time?"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone
+and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But
+he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>When almost immediately they went in to dinner, Mrs. Mansfield
+deliberately turned the conversation to Charmian's recent journey. This
+was to be Charmian's dinner. Charmian was the interesting person, the
+traveller from Algeria. Had not Claude Heath been invited to hear all
+about the trip? Mrs. Mansfield remembered the imaginative look which had
+transformed his face just before he had quoted Chateaubriand. And she
+remembered something else, something Charmian had once said to her: "You
+jump into minds and hearts and poor little I remain outside, squatting,
+like a hungry child!" She had a sincere horror of the elderly mother who
+clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
+to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
+which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
+made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
+There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
+Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
+generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
+child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
+source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
+be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
+learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
+pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
+that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
+as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
+to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
+so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.</p>
+
+<p>Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
+wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
+quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
+desirous tourist."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
+have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
+anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
+rushes on as if driven by furies."</p>
+
+<p>There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
+wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
+unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
+takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
+demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
+express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
+horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
+she felt defiant and almost hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting time. I thought a
+first visit to Africa must be a wonderful experience."</p>
+
+<p>"But, then&mdash;why refuse to come?"</p>
+
+<p>She gazed full into his face, and made her long eyes look impertinent,
+challenging. Mrs. Mansfield felt very uncomfortable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I!" said Heath. "Oh, I didn't know I was in question! Surely we were
+talking about the impression Algiers made upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but if you condemn me for not being more enthusiastic, surely it
+is natural for me to wonder why you wouldn't for anything set foot in
+the African Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. Her nerves felt on edge after the journey. And something in
+the mental atmosphere affected her unfavorably.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Charmian, I don't condemn you. It would be monstrous to
+condemn anyone for not being able to feel in a certain way. I hope I
+have enough brains to see that."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke almost hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother and I had been imagining that you were having a wonderful
+time," he added. "Perhaps it was stupid of us."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Algiers is wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>Heath had changed her, had suddenly enabled her to be more natural.</p>
+
+<p>"I include Mustapha, of course. Some of the gardens are marvellous, and
+the old Arab houses. And I think perhaps you would have thought them
+more marvellous even than I did."</p>
+
+<p>"But, why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I think you could see more in beautiful things than I can,
+although I love them."</p>
+
+<p>Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment
+that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and so it
+gained in value.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that," he said hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Madretta, don't you agree with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt you two would appreciate things differently."</p>
+
+<p>"But what I mean is that Mr. Heath in the things we should both
+appreciate could see more than I."</p>
+
+<p>"Pierce deeper into the heart of the charm? Perhaps he could. Oh, eat a
+little of this chicken!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, dearest mother, I can't. I'm in a Nebuchadnezzar mood. Spinach for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She took some.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Everything seems a little vague and Channelly to-night, even spinach."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at Heath, and now he saw a sort of evasive charm in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must forgive me if I'm tiresome to-night, and remember that while
+you and Madre have been sitting comfortably in Mullion House and
+Berkeley Square, I've been roaring across France and rolling on the sea.
+I hate to be a slave to my body. Nothing makes one feel so contemptible.
+But I haven't attained to the Susan Fleet stage yet. I'll tell you all
+about her some day, Mr. Heath, but not now. You would like her. I know
+that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name
+for you? I call you&mdash;the Great Refuser."</p>
+
+<p>Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"I have my work, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it
+was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished
+Monsieur Rades was with us. He's clever, but he could never do a big
+thing. Could he, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but he does little things beautifully."</p>
+
+<p>"What it must be to be able to do a big thing!" said Charmian. "To draw
+in color and light and perfume and sound, and to know you will be able
+to weave them together, and transform them, and give them out again with
+you in them, making them more strange, more wonderful. We saw an island,
+Susan Fleet and I, that&mdash;well, if I had had genius I could have done
+something exquisite the day I saw it. It seemed to say to me: 'Tell
+them! Tell them! Make them feel me! Make them know me! All those who are
+far away, who will never see me, but who would love me as you do, if
+they knew me.' And&mdash;it was very absurd, I know!&mdash;but I felt as if it
+were disappointed with me because I had no power to obey it. Madre,
+don't you think that must be the greatest joy and privilege of genius,
+that capacity for getting into close relations with strange and
+beautiful things? I couldn't obey the little island, and I felt almost
+as if I had done it a wrong."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Where was it? In the sea?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;oh, no! But I can't tell you! It has to be seen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there came upon her again, almost like a cloud enveloping her,
+the strong impression that destiny would lead her some day to that
+Garden of the Island with Heath. She did not look at him. She feared if
+she did he would know what was in her mind and heart. Making an effort,
+she recovered her self-command, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath.
+Do you mind if I tell you what <i>I</i> think?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you
+ought to give it food. And I think <i>you</i> don't want to give it food."</p>
+
+<p>"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention
+many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose
+imagination was nearly always in a blaze."</p>
+
+<p>Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of
+dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with
+her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give
+herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence.
+She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to
+realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused
+to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her
+depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And
+she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it
+to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any
+longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is
+everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using
+her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by
+Charmian that evening.</p>
+
+<p>Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen
+the island?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his
+hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she
+spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said petulantly. "You remind me of Oliver Cromwell&mdash;somebody
+of that kind&mdash;you ought to have lived in Puritan days. It's
+England&mdash;England&mdash;England in you shrivelling you up. I'm sure in all
+Algiers there isn't one person (not English) who thinks as you do. But
+if you were to travel, if you were to give yourself a chance, how
+different you'd be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, you impertinent child!" said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling, but in
+a voice that was rather sad.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Channel! It's the Channel! I'm not myself to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>Heath laughed and said something light and gay. But as he went out of
+the room his face looked troubled.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had gone, Charmian got up and turned to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you very angry with me, Madre?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. There always was a touch of the minx in you, and I suppose it is
+ineradicable. What have you been doing to your face?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian flushed. The blood even went up to her forehead, and for once
+she looked confused, almost ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"My face? You&mdash;you have noticed something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, directly you came down. Has Adelaide taught you that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Are you angry, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
+And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
+against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
+hair become white."</p>
+
+<p>"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
+me look ten years younger than I do, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> if I paid them, do you know I
+think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Lose&mdash;friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
+than perhaps you would believe to be possible."</p>
+
+<p>"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
+from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
+sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
+her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Bedtime," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."</p>
+
+<p>"But you loved Algiers, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I? I suppose I did."</p>
+
+<p>"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.</p>
+
+<p>When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
+vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
+Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
+her child toward happiness?</p>
+
+<p>For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
+loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
+never be bridged?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Heath was troubled and was angry with himself for being troubled.
+Looking back it seemed to him that he had taken a false step when he
+consented to that dinner with Max Elliot. Surely since that evening he
+had never been wholly at peace. And yet on that evening he had entered
+into his great friendship with Mrs. Mansfield. He could not wish that
+annulled. It added value to his life. But Mrs. Shiffney and Charmian in
+combination had come into his life with her. And they began to vex his
+spirit. He felt as if they represented a great body of opinion which was
+set against a deep conviction of his own. Their motto was, "The world
+for the artist." And what was his, or what had been his until now? "His
+world within the artist." He had fed upon himself, striving rather to
+avoid than to seek outside influences. After Charmian's return from
+Africa a persistent doubt assailed him. His strong instinct might be a
+blind guide. The opinion of the world, represented by the shrewd married
+woman and the intelligent girl, might have reason on its side.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Charmian's resolute assertion of herself on the evening of her
+return had been surprisingly effective. In an hour she had made an
+impression upon Heath such as she had failed to make in many weeks of
+their previous acquaintanceship. Her attack had gone home. "If you were
+to give yourself a chance how different you'd be!" And then her outburst
+about the island! There had been truth in it. Color and light and
+perfume and sound are material given out to the artist. He takes them,
+uses them, combines them, makes them his. He helps them! Ah! That was
+the word! He, as it were, gives them wings so that they may fly into the
+secret places, into the very hearts of men.</p>
+
+<p>Heath looked round upon his hermitage, the little house near St.
+Petersburg Place, and he was companioned by fears. His energies
+weakened. The lack of self-confidence, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> often affected him when he
+was divorced from his work, began to distress him when he was working.
+He disliked what he was doing. Music, always the most evasive of the
+arts, became like a mist in his sight. There were moments when he hated
+being a composer, when he longed to be a poet, a painter, a sculptor.
+Then he would surely at least know whether what he was doing was good or
+bad. Now, though he was inclined to condemn, he did not feel certain
+even of ineptitude.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Searle noted the change in her master, and administered her
+favorite medicine, Fan, with increasing frequency. As the neurasthenic
+believes in strange drugs, expensive cures, impressive doctors, she
+believed in the healing powers of the exceedingly young. Nor was Fan
+doubtful of her own magical properties. She supposed that her intense
+interest in herself and the affairs of her life was fully shared by
+Heath. Her confidences to him in respect of Masterman and other
+important matters were unbridled. She seldom strove to charm by
+listening, and never by talking to Heath about himself. Her method of
+using herself as a draught of healing was to draw him into the current
+of her remarkable life, to set him floating on the tides of her fate.</p>
+
+<p>Heath had a habit of composing after tea, from five or five-thirty
+onward. And Fan frequently appeared at the studio door about half-past
+four, turned slightly sideways with an expectant glance into the large
+room with the book-lined walls, the dim paintings, and the
+orange-colored curtains. A faint air of innocent coquetry hung about
+her. After a pause and a smile from Heath, she would move forward with
+hasty confidence, sometimes reaching the hearthrug with a run. She was
+made welcome, petted, apparently attended to with a whole mind. But
+while she delivered her soul of its burden, at great length and with
+many indrawn breaths and gusts of feeling, Heath was often saying to
+himself, "Am I provincial?"</p>
+
+<p>The word rankled now that Charmian had spoken out with such almost
+impertinent abruptness. Had he then lost faith in Mrs. Mansfield? She
+had never said that she wished him different from what he was. And
+indirectly she had praised his music. He knew it had made a powerful
+impression upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> her. Nevertheless, he could not forget Charmian's
+words. Nor could he help linking her with Mrs. Shiffney in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Fan pulled at his sleeve, raising her voice. He was reminded of a little
+dog clawing to attract attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Fantail! I mean no, of course not! If Masterman refuses to take a
+bath, of course you are obliged to punish him. Yes, yes, I know. Wear
+something? What? What's that? Like you? But he's a man. Very well, we'll
+get him a pair of trousers. No, I won't forget. Yes, like mine, long
+ones like mine. It'll be all right. Take care with that cup. I think
+mother must be wanting you. Press the bell hard. Well, use your thumb
+then. That's it&mdash;harder. There, you see, mother does want you. Harriet
+says so."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet, discreet almost to dumbness though she was, was capable of
+receiving a hint conveyed by her master's expressive eyebrows. And Fan
+passed on, leaving Heath alone with his piano. He played what he had
+played to Mrs. Mansfield to reassure himself. But he was not wholly
+reassured. And he knew that desire for a big verdict which often
+tortures the unknown creator. This was a new and, he thought, ugly phase
+in his life. Was he going to be like the others? Was he going to crave
+for notoriety? Why had the words of a mere girl, of no unusual
+cleverness or perception, had such an effect upon him? How thin she had
+looked that day when she emerged from her furs. That was before she
+started for Africa. The journey had surely made a great difference in
+her. She had come back more of a personage, more resolute. He felt the
+will in her as he had not felt it before. Till she came back he had only
+felt the strong soul in her mother. That was like an unwavering flame.
+How Mrs. Mansfield's husband must have loved her.</p>
+
+<p>And Heath's hands slipped from the piano, and he dreamed over women.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious of solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet was now in town. After the trip to Algiers she had been to
+Folkestone to visit her mother and dear old Mrs. Simpkins. She had also
+combined business with pleasure and been fitted for a new coat and
+skirt. A long telegram from Adelaide Shiffney called her back to London
+to under-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>take secretarial and other duties. As the season approached
+Mrs. Shiffney's life became increasingly agitated. Miss Fleet was an
+excellent hand at subduing, or, if that were impossible, at getting
+neatness into agitation. She knew well how to help fashionable women to
+be absurd with method. She made their silliness almost business-like,
+and assisted them to arrange their various fads in apple-pie order. Amid
+their often hysterical lives she moved with a coolness that was
+refreshing even to them. She never criticized their actions except
+sometimes by tacitly declining to join in them. And they seldom really
+wanted her to do that. Her value to them would have been diminished, if
+not destroyed, had she been quite as they were.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment she was in Grosvenor Square.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian envied Adelaide Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of
+Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny
+something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother.
+Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's
+account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her
+mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would
+not have minded the fact that it was known. But she did mind very much
+its being known when she had not told it. Sometimes she said to herself
+that she was being absurd, that Mrs. Mansfield knew, even suspected,
+nothing. But unfortunately she was a woman and, therefore, obliged to be
+horribly intelligent in certain directions. Her painted cheeks and
+delicately-darkened eyelashes had spoken what her lips had never said.
+It was vain to pretend the contrary. And she sedulously pretended it.</p>
+
+<p>Her sense of separation from her mother made Charmian the more desirous
+of further intercourse with Susan Fleet. She felt as if only Miss Fleet
+could help her, though how she did not know. After repeated attempts on
+her part a meeting was at last arranged, and one afternoon the
+Theosophist made her appearance in Berkeley Square and was shown
+upstairs to Charmian's little sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was playing a Polonaise of Chopin's on a cottage piano. She
+played fairly well, but not remarkably. She had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> been trained by a
+competent master and had a good deal of execution. But her playing
+lacked that grip and definite intention which are the blood and bone of
+a performance. Several people thought nevertheless that it was full of
+charm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Susan!"&mdash;she stopped abruptly on a diminished seventh. "Come and
+sit here! May I?"</p>
+
+<p>She kissed the serene face, clasping the white-gloved hands with both of
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Another from Folkestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What a fit! I simply must go there. D'you like my little room?"</p>
+
+<p>Susan looked quietly round, examining the sage-green walls, the
+water-colors, the books in Florentine bindings, the chairs and sofas
+covered with chintz, which showed a bold design of purple grapes with
+green leaves, the cream-colored rough curtains, and Charmian's
+dachshund, Caroline, who lay awake before the small fire which burned in
+a grate lined with Morris tiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I like it very much. It looks like your home and as if you were
+fond of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am, so far as one can be fond of a room."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, hesitating, thinking of the little island and her sudden
+outburst, longing to return at once to the subject which secretly
+obsessed her, yet fearing to seem childish, too egoistic, perhaps
+naively indiscreet. Susan looked at her with a friendly gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"How are things going with you? Are you happier than you were at
+Mustapha?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;about that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you have been worrying."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I look uglier?" cried Charmian, almost with sharpness.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet could not help smiling, but in her smile there was no
+sarcasm, only a gentle, tolerant humor.</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know. People say my ideas about looks are all crazy. I can't
+admire many so-called beauties, you see. There's more expression in your
+face, I think. But I don't know that I should call it happy expression."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I were like you. I wish I could feel indifferent to happiness!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose I am indifferent. Only I don't feel that every small
+thing of to-day has power over me, any more than I feel that a grain of
+dust which I can flick from my dress makes me unclean. It's a long
+journey we are making. And I always think it's a great mistake to fuss
+on a journey."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anyone who can give me what you do," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a long journey up the Ray," said Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"The Ray?" said Charmian, seized with a sense of mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"The bridge that leads from the personal which perishes to the immortal
+which endures."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help loving the personal. I'm not like you. I do love the
+feeling of definite personality, separated from everything, mine, me.
+It's no use pretending."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretence is always disgusting."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. But still&mdash;never mind, I was only going to say
+something you wouldn't agree with."</p>
+
+<p>Susan did not ask what it was, but quietly turned the conversation, and
+soon succeeded in ridding Charmian of her faint self-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to meet&mdash;him."</p>
+
+<p>At last Charmian had said it, with a slight flush.</p>
+
+<p>"I have met him," returned Miss Fleet, in her powerful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried Charmian, on an almost indignant note.</p>
+
+<p>"I met him last night."</p>
+
+<p>"How could you? Where? He never goes to anything!"</p>
+
+<p>"I went with Adelaide to the Elgar Concert at Queen's Hall. He was there
+with a musical critic, and happened to be next to us."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked very vexed and almost injured.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney&mdash;and you talked to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Adelaide introduced us."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. Then Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose he was his real self&mdash;with Adelaide Shiffney. But did
+you like him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did. I thought him genuine. And one sees the spirit clearly in his
+face."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure he liked you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I really don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. Did he&mdash;did you&mdash;either of you say anything about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly we did."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he&mdash;did he seem&mdash;did you notice whether he was at all&mdash;? Caroline,
+be quiet!"</p>
+
+<p>The dachshund, who had shown signs of an intention to finish her reverie
+on Charmian's knees, blinked, looked guilty, lay down again, turned over
+on her left side with her back to her mistress, and heaved a sigh that
+nearly degenerated into a whimper.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he talked most of the time with Mrs. Shiffney?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we had quite five minutes together. I spoke about our time at
+Mustapha."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he seem interested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much, I thought."</p>
+
+<p>"Very much! Oh, Susan! But he has a manner of seeming interested. It may
+not mean anything. But still I do think since I have come back he sees
+that I am not quite a nonentity. He has been here several times, for
+mother of course. Even now I have never heard his music. But there is a
+difference. I believe in such a place as London unless one has
+resolution to assert oneself people think one is a sort of shadow. I
+have so often thought of what you said about my perhaps having to learn
+through Claude Heath and to teach him, too. Sometimes when I look at him
+I feel it must be so. But what have I to teach? D'you know
+since&mdash;since&mdash;well, it makes me feel humble often. And yet I know that
+the greatest man needs help. Men are a sort of children. I've often been
+surprised by the childishness of really big men. Please tell me all he
+said to you."</p>
+
+<p>Very calmly Susan told. She had just finished, and Charmian was about to
+speak again, when Mrs. Mansfield opened the door. Charmian sprang up so
+abruptly that Caroline was startled into a husky bark.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Madre! Susan Fleet is here!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield knew at once that she had broken in upon a confidential
+interview, not by Miss Fleet's demeanor, but by Charmian's. But she did
+not show her knowledge. She sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> down and joined pleasantly in the talk.
+She had often seen Miss Fleet in London, but she did not know her well.
+At once she realized that Charmian had found an excellent friend. And
+she was not jealous because of the confidence given but not given to
+her. Youth, she knew, is wilful and must have its way. The nearest, for
+some inscrutable reason, are generally told the least.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Fleet went away, Mrs. Mansfield said:</p>
+
+<p>"That is one of the most thoroughbred human beings I have ever seen. No
+wonder the greatest snobs like her. There is nothing a snob hates so
+much as snobbery in another. <i>Viva</i> to your new friend, Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>She wondered a little whether Miss Fleet's perception of character was
+as keen as her breeding was definite, when she heard that Claude Heath
+had met her.</p>
+
+<p>Heath told Mrs. Mansfield this. Miss Fleet had made a strong impression
+upon him. At the moment when he had met her he had felt specially
+downcast. The musical critic, with whom he had gone to the concert, had
+been a fellow student with him at the Royal College. Being young the
+critic was very critical, very sure of himself, very decisive in his
+worship of the new idols and in his scathing contempt for the old. He
+spoke of Mendelssohn as if the composer of <i>Elijah</i> had earned undying
+shame, of Gounod as if he ought to have been hanged for creating his
+<i>Faust</i>. His glorification of certain modern impressionists in music
+depressed Heath, almost as much as his abuse of the dead who had been
+popular, and who were still appreciated by some thousands, perhaps
+millions, of nobodies. He made Heath, in his discontented condition,
+feel as if all art were futile.</p>
+
+<p>"Why give up everything," he thought, "merely to earn in the end the
+active contempt of men who have given up nothing? What is it that drives
+me on? A sort of madness, perhaps, something to be rooted out."</p>
+
+<p>He almost shivered as the conviction came to him that he must have been
+composing for posterity, since he did not desire present publicity. No
+doubt he had tried to trick himself into the belief that he had toiled
+for himself alone, paid the tribute of ardent work to his own soul. Now
+he asked him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>self, with bitter scepticism: "Does any man really ever do
+that?" And his world seemed to fall about him like shadows dropping down
+into a void.</p>
+
+<p>Then came his five minutes of talk with Susan Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>When Heath spoke of it to Mrs. Mansfield he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I was a cripple when we began. When we stopped I felt as if I could
+climb to a peak. And she said nothing memorable. But I had been in her
+atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are very susceptible to atmosphere."</p>
+
+<p>"Too susceptible. That's why I keep so much to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;the cloister."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him earnestly, even searchingly. He slightly reddened,
+looked down, said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a natural life, the life of the cloister."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you mean to come out."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I mean. I am all at a loose end lately."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were still on him.</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know. Perhaps hearing about Africa, of that voyage I might
+have made, unsettled me. I'm a weakling, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Very strong in one way."</p>
+
+<p>"Very weak in another, perhaps. It would have been better to go and have
+done with it, than to brood over not having gone."</p>
+
+<p>"You are envying Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some days I envy everyone who isn't Claude Heath," he answered
+evasively, with a little covering laugh. "Of one thing I am quite sure,
+that I wish I were a male Miss Fleet. She knows what few people know."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is small and what is great."</p>
+
+<p>"And you found that out in five minutes at a concert?"</p>
+
+<p>"Elgar's is music that helps the perceptions."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield's perceptions were very keen. Yet she was puzzled by
+Heath. She realized that he was disturbed and attributed that
+disturbance to Charmian. Had he suspected, or found out, that Charmian
+imagined herself to be in love with him? He came as usual to the house.
+His friendship with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> Mrs. Mansfield did not seem to her to have changed.
+But his relation to Charmian was not what it had been. Indeed, it was
+scarcely possible that it should be so. For Charmian had continued to be
+definite ever since her drastic remarks at dinner on the evening of her
+return. She bantered Heath, laughed at him, patronized him in the pretty
+way of a pretty London girl who takes the world for her own with the
+hands of youth. When she found him with her mother she did not glide
+away, or remain as a mere listener while they talked. She stayed to hold
+her own, sometimes even&mdash;so her mother thought, not without pathos&mdash;a
+little aggressively.</p>
+
+<p>Heath's curious and deep reserve, which underlay his apparent quick and
+sensitive readiness to be sympathetic with those about him, to give them
+what they wanted of him, was not abated by Charmian's banter, her
+delicate impertinences, her laughing attacks. Mrs. Mansfield noticed
+that. He turned to her still when he wished to speak for a moment out of
+his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred
+him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew
+how to involve him in eager arguments.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said
+to Mrs. Mansfield:</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could
+concentrate. She has powers, you know."</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?"
+she thought.</p>
+
+<p>She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised
+her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.</p>
+
+<p>"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they
+could see, we should have ten commandments to obey&mdash;perhaps twenty."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden
+Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new
+opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was
+unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first
+performance of this work, which was called <i>Le Paradis Terrestre</i>, the
+inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual
+excitement. Whispers went round that the new opera was quite
+extraordinary, epoch-making, that it was causing a prodigious impression
+at rehearsal, that it was absolutely original, that there was no doubt
+of its composer's genius. Then reports as to the composer's personality
+and habits began to get about. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, knew him. But
+she had introduced him to nobody. He was her personal prey at present.
+She, however, allowed it to be known that he was quite charming, but the
+strangest creature imaginable. It seemed that he had absolutely no moral
+sense, did not know what it meant. If he saw an insect trodden upon, or
+a fly killed on a window-pane, he could not work for days. But when his
+first wife&mdash;he had been married at sixteen&mdash;shot herself in front of
+him, on account of his persistent cruelty and infidelity, he showed no
+sign of distress, had the body carried out of his studio, and went on
+composing. Decidedly an original! Everybody was longing to know him. The
+libraries and the box-office of the Opera House were bombarded with
+demands for seats for the first performance, at which the beautiful
+Annie Meredith, singer, actress, dancer, speculator, and breeder of
+prize bulldogs, was to appear in the heroine's part.</p>
+
+<p>Three nights before the premi&egrave;re, a friend, suddenly plunged into
+mourning by the death of a relation, sent Mrs. Mansfield her box.
+Charmian was overjoyed. Max Elliot, Lady Mildred Burnington, Margot and
+Kit Drake, Paul Lane,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> all her acquaintances, in fact, were already
+"raving" about Jacques Sennier, without knowing him, and about his
+opera, without having heard it. Sensation, success, they were in the
+air. Not to go to this premi&egrave;re would be a disaster. Charmian's
+instinctive love of being "in" everything had caused her to feel acute
+vexation when her mother had told her that their application for stalls
+had been refused. Now, at the last moment, they had one of the best
+boxes in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom shall we take?" said Mrs. Mansfield. "There's room for four."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not invite Mr. Heath?" said Charmian, with a rather elaborate
+carelessness. "As he's a musician it might interest him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will if you like. But he's sure to refuse."</p>
+
+<p>Of late Heath had retired into his shell. Mrs. Shiffney had not seen him
+for months. Max Elliot had given him up in despair. Even in Berkeley
+Square he was but seldom visible. His excuse for not calling was that he
+knew nobody had any time to spare in the season.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't write to him, Madre, or he will. Get him to come here and ask
+him. He really ought to follow the progress of his own art, silly
+fellow. I have no patience with his absurd fogeydom."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with the lightest scorn, but in her long eyes there was an
+intentness which contradicted her manner.</p>
+
+<p>Heath came to the house, was invited to come to the box, and had just
+refused when Charmian entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"You're afraid, Mr. Heath," she said, smiling at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid! What of?" he asked quickly, and a little defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of hearing what the foreign composers of your own age are doing,
+of comparing their talents with your own. That's so English! Never mind
+what the rest of the world is about! We'll go on in our own way! It
+seems so valiant, doesn't it? And really it's nothing but cowardice,
+fear of being forced to see that others are advancing while we are
+standing still. I'm sick of English stolidity!"</p>
+
+<p>Heath's eyes shown with something that looked like anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't think I'm afraid!" he said stiffly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to
+the premi&egrave;re with the Mansfields. It was a triumph for Charmian, but she
+did not show that she knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Heath was in his most reserved mood. He had the manner of the defiant
+male lured from behind his defenses into the open against his will. Some
+intelligence within him knew that his cold stiffness was rather
+ridiculous, and made him unhappy. Mrs. Mansfield was really sorry for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more humorously tragic than pleasure indulged in under
+protest. And Heath's protest was painfully apparent.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, who was looking her best, her most self-possessed, a radiant
+minx, with fleeting hints of depths and softnesses, half veiled by the
+firm habit of the world, seemed to tower morally above the composer. He
+marvelled afresh at the triumphant composure of modern girlhood. Sitting
+between the two women in the box&mdash;no one else had been asked to join
+them&mdash;he looked out, almost shyly, at the crowded and brilliant house.
+Mrs. Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a
+box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul
+Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was
+covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine
+intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair. In the box
+next the stage on the same side were the Max Elliots with Sir Hilary
+Burnington and Lady Mildred.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked eagerly about the house, putting up her opera-glasses,
+finding everywhere friends and acquaintances. She frankly loved the
+world with the energy of her youth.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the sight of the huge and crowded theater, full of
+watchful eyes and whispering lips, full of brains and souls waiting to
+be fed, the sound of its hum and stir, sent a warm thrill through her,
+thrill of expectation, of desire. She thought of that man, Jacques
+Sennier, hidden somewhere, the cause of all that was happening in the
+house, of all that would happen almost immediately upon the stage. She
+envied him with intensity. Then she looked at Claude Heath's rather grim
+and constrained expression. Was it possible that Heath did not share her
+feeling of envy?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door. Heath sprang up and opened it. Paul Lane's
+pale and discontented face appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloa! Haven't seen you since that dinner! May I come in for a
+minute?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke to the Mansfields.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly marvellous! Everyone behind the scenes is mad about it! Annie
+Meredith says she will make the success of her life in it. Who's that
+Frenchwoman with Adelaide Shiffney? Madame Sennier, the composer's
+wife&mdash;his second, the first killed herself. Very clever woman. She's not
+going to kill herself. Sennier says he could do nothing without her,
+never would have done this opera but for her. She found him the
+libretto, kept him at it, got the Covent Garden management interested in
+it, persuaded Annie Meredith to come over from South America to sing the
+part. An extraordinary woman, ugly, but a will of iron, and an ambition
+that can't be kept back. Her hour of triumph to-night. There goes the
+curtain."</p>
+
+<p>As Lane slipped out of the box, he whispered to Heath:</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney hopes you'll come and speak to her between the acts. Her
+name's on the door."</p>
+
+<p>Heath sat down a little behind Mrs. Mansfield. Although the curtain was
+now up he noticed that Charmian, with raised opera-glasses, was
+earnestly looking at Mrs. Shiffney's box. He noticed, too, that her left
+hand shook slightly, almost imperceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Her hour of triumph!" Yes, the hour proved to be that. Madame Sennier's
+energies had not been expended in vain. From the first bars of music,
+from the first actions upon the stage, the audience was captured by the
+new work. There was no hesitating. There were no dangerous moments. The
+evening was like a crescendo, admirably devised and carried out. And
+through it all Charmian watched the ugly white face of the red-haired
+woman opposite to her, lived imaginatively in that woman's heart and
+brain, admired her, almost hated her, longed to be what she was.</p>
+
+<p>Between the acts she saw men pouring into Mrs. Shiffney's box. And every
+one was presented to the ugly woman, whose vivacity and animation were
+evidently intense, who seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> to demand homage as a matter of course.
+Several foreigners kissed her hand. Max Elliot's whole attitude, as he
+bent over her, showed adoration and enthusiasm. Even Paul Lane was
+smiling, as he drew her attention to a glove split by his energy in
+applause.</p>
+
+<p>Heath had spoken of Mrs. Shiffney's message. He was evidently reluctant
+to obey it, but Charmian insisted on his going.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know what Madame Sennier is like. You must ask her if she is
+happy, find out how happy she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, Mr. Heath isn't a mental detective!"</p>
+
+<p>"I speak such atrocious French!" said Heath, looking nervous and
+miserable.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you can say, '<i>Ch&egrave;re Madame, j'esp&egrave;re que vous &eacute;tes bien
+contente ce soir</i>?'"</p>
+
+<p>When Heath had left the box Mrs. Mansfield said gravely to her daughter:</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madretta."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you are behaving very kindly this evening. You scarcely
+seem to remember that Mr. Heath is our guest."</p>
+
+<p>"Against his will," she said, in a voice that was almost hard. There was
+a hardness, too, in her whole look and manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I think that only makes the hostess's obligation the stronger," said
+Mrs. Mansfield. "I don't at all like the Margot manner with men."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Madre; but I had no idea I was imitating Margot Drake."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield said no more. Charmian, with flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes, turned to look once more at Adelaide Shiffney's box.</p>
+
+<p>In about three minutes she saw Mrs. Shiffney glance behind her. Max
+Elliot, who was still with her, got up and opened the door, and Heath
+stood in the background. Charmian frowned and pressed her little teeth
+on her lower lip. Her body felt stiff with attention, with scrutiny. She
+saw Heath come forward, Max Elliot holding him by the arm, and talking
+eagerly and smiling. Mrs. Shiffney smiled, too, laughed, gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> him her
+powerful hand. Now he was being introduced to Madame Sennier, who surely
+appraised him with one swift, almost cruelly intelligent glance.</p>
+
+<p>His French! His French! Charmian trembled for it, for him because of it.
+If Mrs. Mansfield could have known how solicitous, how tender, how
+motherly, the girl felt at that moment under her mask of shining,
+radiant hardness! But Mrs. Mansfield was glancing about the house with
+grave and even troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Heath was talking to Madame Sennier. He was even sitting down beside
+her. She spoke, evidently with volubility, making rapid gestures with
+her hands. Then she paused. She was listening attentively to Heath. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Elliot listened, too, as if absorbed. Heath's French must
+really be excellent. Why had he&mdash;? If only she could hear what he was
+saying! She tingled with curiosity. How he held them, those three
+people! From here he looked distinguished, interesting. He stood out
+even in this crowd as an interesting man. Madame Sennier made an upward
+movement of her head, full of will. She put out her hand, and laid it on
+Heath's arm. Now they all seemed to be talking together. Madame Sennier
+looked radiant, triumphant, even autocratic. She pointed toward the
+stage emphatically, made elaborate descriptive movements with her hands.
+A bell sounded somewhere. Heath got up. In a moment he and Max Elliot
+had left the box together. The two women were alone. They leaned toward
+each other apparently in earnest conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I know they are talking about him! I know they are!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian actually formed the words with her lips. The curtain rose as
+Heath quietly entered the box. Charmian did not turn to him or look at
+him then. Only when the act was over did she move and say:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Heath, your French evidently comes at call."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;oh, we were talking in English!"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Sennier speaks English?" said Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellently!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she happy?" she asked, moving her hand on the edge of the box.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She seems so."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell her what you thought?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Heath.</p>
+
+<p>His voice had become suddenly deeper, more expressive.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her that I thought it wonderful. And so it is. She said&mdash;in
+French this: 'Ah, my friend, wait till the last act. Then it is no
+longer the earthly Paradise!'"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence. Then Charmian said, in a voice that
+sounded rather dry:</p>
+
+<p>"You liked her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Yes, I think I did. We were all rather carried away, I
+suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Carried away! By what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is evidently a great moment in Madame Sennier's life. One must
+sympathize."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked and saw two spots of color burning high up on his
+cheeks. His voice had suddenly quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so," said Mrs. Mansfield. "This evening probably means
+more to Madame Sennier even than to her husband."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian said nothing more till the end of the evening. Beneath the
+radiant coolness of her demeanor, the air of triumphant self-possession,
+she was secretly quivering with excitement. She feared to betray
+herself. Soon she was spellbound by the music of the last act and by the
+wonderful performance of Annie Meredith. As she listened, leaning
+forward in the box, and always feeling intensely the nearness to her of
+Heath, and of Heath's strong musical talent, she remembered something
+she had once said in the drawing-room in Berkeley Square, "We want a new
+note." Here was the new note in French music, the new talent given to
+the wondering and delighted world to-night. To-morrow doubtless Europe
+and America would know that the husband of the red-haired woman opposite
+had taken his place among the famous men to whom the world must pay
+attention. From to-morrow thousands of art lovers would be looking
+toward Jacques Sennier with expectation, the curious expectation of
+those who crave for fresh food on which they may feed their intellects,
+and their souls. The great tonic of a new development in art<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> was
+offered to all those who cared to take it by the man who would probably
+be staring from behind the footlights at the crowd in a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>If only the new note had been English!</p>
+
+<p>"It shall be! It shall be!" Charmian repeated to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She looked again and again at Madame Sennier, striving to grasp the
+secret of her will for another, even while she gave herself to the
+enchantment of the music. But for that woman in all probability the
+music would never have been given life. Somewhere, far down in the
+mystery of an individual, it would have lain, corpse-like. A woman had
+willed that it should live. She deserved the homage she had received,
+and would receive to-night. For she had made her man do a great thing,
+because she had helped him to understand his own greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, out of the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the
+music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to
+detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the
+Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so
+now she seemed to be aware that the future would show a brilliant crowd
+assembled in some great theater, not for Jacques Sennier, but for one
+near her. Really she was violently willing that it should be so. But she
+thought she was receiving&mdash;from whom, or from what, she could not
+tell&mdash;a mysterious message.</p>
+
+<p>And the red-haired woman's place was filled by another.</p>
+
+<p>At last the curtain fell on the final scene, and the storm which meant a
+triumph was unchained. Heath sprang up from his seat, carried away by a
+generous enthusiasm. He did not know how to be jealous of anyone who
+could do a really fine thing. Charmian, in the midst of the uproar,
+heard him shouting "Bravo!" behind her, in a voice quick with
+excitement. His talent was surely calling to a brother. The noise all
+over the house strengthened gradually, then abruptly rose like a great
+wave. A small, thin, and pale man, with a big nose, a mighty forehead,
+scanty black hair and beard, and blinking eyes, had stepped out before
+the curtain. He leaned forward, made a movement as if to retreat, was
+stopped by a louder roar, stepped quickly to the middle of the small
+strip of stage that was visible, and stood still with his big head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+slightly thrust out toward the multitude which acclaimed him.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned round to Claude Heath, who towered above her. He did not
+notice her movement. He was gazing at the stage while he violently
+clapped his hands. She gazed up at him. He felt her eyes, leaned down.
+For a moment they looked at each other, while the noise in the house
+increased. Claude saw that Charmian wanted to speak to him&mdash;and
+something else. After a moment, during which the blood rose in his
+cheeks and forehead, and he felt as if he were out in wind and rain, in
+falling snow and stern sunshine, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be&mdash;for you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the studio of Mullion House that night, Harriet, moving softly,
+placed a plate of sandwiches and a long bottle of Rhine wine before she
+went up to bed. Moonlight shone on the scrap of garden, gleamed on the
+leaded panes of the studio windows, from which the orange-colored
+curtains were drawn back. The aspect of the big room had changed because
+it was summer. It looked bigger, less cosy without a fire. One lamp was
+lighted and cast a gentle glow over the books that lay near it, and over
+the writing-table on which there were sheets of manuscript music. The
+piano stood open. A spray of white roses in a tall vase looked spectral
+against the shadows. After Harriet's departure the clock ticked for a
+long time in an empty room.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly two o'clock, and the moon was waning, when the studio door
+was opened to let in Heath. He was alone. Holding the door with one
+hand, he stood and stared at the room, examined it with a sort of
+excited and close attention. Then he took off his hat, shut the door,
+laid hat and coat on the sofa, went to the table where Harriet had put
+the tray, and poured out a glass of wine. He sighed, looked at the gold
+of the wine, made beautiful by the lamplight, drank it, and sat down in
+the worn armchair which faced the line of window. Then he lit a cigar,
+leaned back, and smoked, keeping his eyes on the glass.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the leaded panes the faint silver shifted, faded, and presently
+died. Heath watched, and thought, "The moon gone!" He did not feel as if
+he could ever wish to sleep again. The excitement within him was like a
+ravaging disease. He was capable of excitement that never comes to the
+ordinary man, although he took sedulous care to hide that fact. His
+imagination bristled like a spear held by one alert for attack. What was
+life going to do to him? What was he going to let it do?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charmian Mansfield loved him, and believed in his genius, as he did not
+believe, or had not till now believed in it. He was loved, he was
+believed in, by the thin mystery of a modern girl, who had known many
+men with talents, with names, with big reputations. Under that
+triumphant composure, that almost cruel banter, that whimsical airy
+contempt, that cool frivolity of the minx, there was emotion, there was
+love for him and for his talent. Always that night he thought of his
+talent in connection with Charmian's love, he scarcely knew why. For how
+long had she loved him? And why did she love him? He thought of his
+body, and it surprised him that she loved that. He thought of his mind,
+his imagination, his temper, his tricks, his faults, his habits. He
+thought of his deep reserve, and of the intense emotion he sometimes
+felt when he was quite alone and composing. Sometimes he felt like a
+great fire then. Sometimes he felt brutal, almost savage, decisive in a
+sense that was surely cruel. Did she suspect all that? Did she love all
+that without consciously suspecting it? Sometimes, when he had been
+working very hard, overworking perhaps, he felt inclined to do evil. If
+she knew that!</p>
+
+<p>But she did not, she could not know him. Why, then, did she love him?
+Heath was not a conceited man, but he did not at this moment doubt
+Charmian's love for him. Though he was sometimes child-like, and could
+be, like most men, very blind, he had a keen intellect which could
+reason about psychology. He knew how women love success. He knew how, in
+a moment of excitement such as that at the end of the opera, when
+Jacques Sennier came before the curtain, they instinctively concentrate
+on the man who has made the success. He knew, or divined, what woman's
+concentration is. And he realized the bigness of the tribute paid to him
+by Charmian's abrupt detachment from the hour and the man, by the sweep
+of her brain and her heart to him. Any conqueror of women might have
+been proud of such a tribute, have considered it rare. Her eyes, her
+voice, in the tempest they had thrilled him. He had been only thinking
+of Sennier's music and of Sennier, of art and the human being behind it.
+Nothing within him had consciously called to Charmian. Nor had there&mdash;he
+felt sure now&mdash;been the unconscious call sent out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> by the man of talent
+who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy
+voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been
+wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her,
+to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred
+out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by an impulse.</p>
+
+<p>"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be for you."</p>
+
+<p>She had only whispered the words, but they had seemed to stab him, with
+so much mental force had she sent them out. Mrs. Mansfield had not heard
+them. And how extraordinary Charmian's eyes had been during that moment
+when she and he had gazed at one another. He had not known eyes could
+look like that, as if the whole spirit of a human being were crouching
+in them, intent. How far away from the eyes the human spirit must often
+be!</p>
+
+<p>As Heath thought of Charmian's eyes he felt as if he knew very little of
+real life yet.</p>
+
+<p>She had turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He
+had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a
+splendid r&ocirc;le. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily,
+but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the
+beautiful. He&mdash;Heath&mdash;had stood upright again, had gone on applauding
+with the rest. But his thoughts had then all been on himself. "If all
+this were for me! If I should ever have such an hour in my life, such a
+tribute as this! If within me is the capacity to conquer all these
+diverse natures and temperaments, to weld them together in a common
+desire, the desire to show thankfulness for what a man has been able to
+give them!" And he had thrilled for the first time with a fierce new
+longing, the longing for the best that is meant by fame.</p>
+
+<p>This longing persisted now.</p>
+
+<p>Heath had left Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian under the arcade of the Opera
+House, after putting them into their car. The crush coming out had been
+great. They had had to wait for nearly half an hour in the vestibule.
+During<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> that time the Mansfields had talked to many friends. Charmian
+had completely regained her composure. She had introduced Heath to
+several people, among others to Kit and Margot Drake, who spoke of
+nothing but the opera and its composer and Annie Meredith. The vestibule
+was full of the voices of praise. Everybody seemed unusually excited.
+Paul Lane had actually come up to them with beads of perspiration
+standing on his forehead, and his eyes shining with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a red-letter night in my life," he had said. "I have felt a
+strong and genuine emotion. There's a future for music, after all, and a
+big one. If only there were one or two more Jacques Senniers!"</p>
+
+<p>Even then Charmian had not looked again at Heath. She had answered
+lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps there are. Who knows? Even Monsieur Sennier was practically
+unknown four hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>"There are not many parts of the civilized world in which his name will
+be unknown in four days from now," said Paul Lane, "or even in
+twenty-four hours. I'm going to meet him and his wife at supper at
+Adelaide Shiffney's, so I must say good-night&mdash;oh, and good-night, Mr.
+Heath."</p>
+
+<p>Oh&mdash;and good-night, Mr. Heath.</p>
+
+<p>Claude had walked all the way home alone slowly. He had passed through
+Piccadilly Circus, through Regent Street, through Oxford Street, along
+the north side of the closed and deserted Park on which the faint
+moonlight lay. When he reached his door he had not gone in. He had
+turned, had paced up and down. The sight of a very large policeman
+looking attentive, then grimly inquiring, then crudely suspicious, had
+finally decided him to enter his house.</p>
+
+<p>What was life going to do to him if he did not hold back, did not
+persist any longer in his mania for refusal? There was a new world
+spread out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into
+it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated,
+was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
+wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
+him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
+said to him, after an argument<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
+whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
+instinct of self-preservation."</p>
+
+<p>What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
+greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
+what he had to say about her husband's opera.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
+he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
+full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."</p>
+
+<p>Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?</p>
+
+<p>Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
+he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
+action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
+leap.</p>
+
+<p>He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
+manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
+But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
+beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
+something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
+forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
+He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
+refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
+this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
+crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
+remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
+passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
+a restricted light.</p>
+
+<p>The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
+he lusted for fame.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
+something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
+surely showed her love. Perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> instinctively she knew that he needed
+venom, and that she alone could supply it.</p>
+
+<p>The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew
+nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
+force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
+was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
+have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p>He loved her just then for that.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;and good-night, Mr. Heath."</p>
+
+<p>Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.</p>
+
+<p>Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
+room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
+dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
+his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
+inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
+Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
+reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
+atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
+opera here. In vain to try.</p>
+
+<p>With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
+snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
+across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
+futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
+unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
+bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
+resolved to have done with it.</p>
+
+<p>Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
+down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
+but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
+whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
+known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
+ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
+the instinct of love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
+even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
+guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
+blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
+it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
+eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
+silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
+of the night falling toward the arms of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Claude walked swiftly on, turned the corner, and came into the
+thoroughfare which skirts Kensington Gardens and the Park. Some fifty
+yards away there was a letter box. He hurried toward it, driven on by
+defiance of that within him which would fain have held him back, by the
+blind instinct to trample which sometimes takes hold of a strong and
+emotional nature in a moment of unusual excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"The great refuser! No, I'll not be that any longer."</p>
+
+<p>As he drew near to the letter box he felt that till now he had been a
+composer. Henceforth he would be a man. He had lived for an art.
+Henceforth he would live for life, and would make life feel his art.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his letter into the box.</p>
+
+<p>In falling out of his sight it made a faint, uneasy noise.</p>
+
+<p>Claude stood there like one listening.</p>
+
+<p>The grayness seemed to grow slightly more livid over the tree-tops and
+behind the branches. The letter did not speak again. So he thought of
+that tiny noise, as the speech of the dropping letter. It must have slid
+down against the side of the box. Now it was lying still. There was
+nothing more for him to do but to go home. Yet he waited before the
+letter box, with his eyes fixed upon the small white plaque on which was
+printed the time of the next delivery&mdash;eight-forty <span class="smcap">A.M.</span></p>
+
+<p>Was it the sound, or was it the movement preceding the sound, which had
+worked a cold change in his heart? He felt almost stunned by what he had
+done, like a man who strikes and sees the result of his blow, who has
+not measured its force, and sees his victim measure it. Eight-forty
+<span class="smcap">A.M.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></span></p>
+
+<p>A step sounded. He looked, and saw in the distance the large policeman
+slowly advancing.</p>
+
+<p>When he was again in his house he closed the front door softly, and went
+once more to the studio. He looked round it, examining the familiar
+objects: the piano, his work table, the books, the deep, well-worn,
+homely chairs, the rugs which Mrs. Mansfield had liked. On the floor, by
+his table, lay the fragments of manuscript music. How had he come to
+tear it, his last composition?</p>
+
+<p>He went over to the window, opened a square of the glass, sat down on
+the window-seat, and looked out to the tiny garden. A faint smell, as of
+dewy earth, rose from it, fresh, delicate, and&mdash;somehow&mdash;pathetic. As
+Claude leaned on the window-sill this frail scent, which seemed part of
+the dying night, connected itself in his mind with his past life. He
+drew it in through his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
+floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
+making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
+guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
+a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
+himself?</p>
+
+<p>The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
+at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
+written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
+He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
+brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
+feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
+given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
+broken with the old life.</p>
+
+<p>At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
+would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
+probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face&mdash;a feeling of desperation
+seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
+that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
+clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
+to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
+words. The thought of Madame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Sennier and all she had done for her
+husband had winged his pen.</p>
+
+<p>The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
+had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
+poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
+No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
+in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
+this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
+impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
+mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
+little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
+carried him away in the theater.</p>
+
+<p>Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
+was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
+never written that letter of love to Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
+fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
+looked at them, and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"If only my letter lay there instead!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
+Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
+strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
+of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
+possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
+Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
+Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
+feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
+Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
+by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"</p>
+
+<p>Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
+door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.</p>
+
+<p>Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
+Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
+life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
+fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
+to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
+she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
+ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
+emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
+laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
+with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
+not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.</p>
+
+<p>The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
+Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
+Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
+obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
+almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
+so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
+an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
+life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
+change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
+be divorced from him. An atmosphere had enfolded him, had become as it
+were part of him, drowning his life in its peculiar influence. He must
+emerge from it. But he would never be able to emerge from it in the
+little old house which he loved. So he got rid of his lease, with
+Charmian's acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>She did not really want to live on the north side of the Park. And the
+neighborhood was "Bayswatery." But she guessed that Claude was not quite
+happy in deserting his characteristic roof-tree, and she eagerly sought
+for another. It was found in Kensington Square. Several interesting and
+even famous persons lived there. The houses were old, not large,
+compact. They had a "flavor" of culture, which set them apart from the
+new and mushroom dwellings of London, and from all flats whatsoever.
+They were suitable to "artistic" people. A great actress, much sought
+after in the social world, had lived for years in this square. A famous
+musician was opposite to her. A baronet, who knew how to furnish, and
+whose wife gave delightful small parties, was next door but three. A
+noted novelist had just moved there from a flat in Queen Anne's
+Mansions. In fact, there was a cachet on Kensington Square.</p>
+
+<p>And though it was rather far out, you can go almost anywhere in ten
+minutes if you can afford to take a taxi-cab. Charmian and Claude had
+fifteen hundred a year between them. She had no doubt of their being
+able to take taxi-cabs on such an income. And, later on, of course
+Claude would make a lot of money. Jacques Sennier's opera was bringing
+him in thousands of pounds, and he had received great offers for future
+works from America, where <i>Le Paradis Terrestre</i> had just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> made a furore
+at the Metropolitan Opera House. He and Madame Sennier were in New York
+now, having a more than lovely time. The generous American nation had
+taken them both to its heart. Charmian had read several accounts of
+their triumphs, artistic and social, in English newspapers. She had said
+to herself "Ours presently!" And with renewed and vital energy, she had
+devoted herself afresh to the task of "getting into" the new house.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield had helped her, with sober love and devotion.</p>
+
+<p>Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the
+ceremony of hanging the <i>cr&eacute;maill&egrave;re</i> was being duly accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends.
+Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life,
+had wished that it should be so. His few intimates in London were not in
+the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
+Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
+other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
+always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
+Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
+people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.</p>
+
+<p>And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
+could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
+of whom it was old.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
+mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
+in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
+Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
+in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
+Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
+who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
+flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
+Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
+desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
+honorable conduct, her anxiety<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> about his future with her child, her
+painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
+girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
+of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
+through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
+the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
+strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
+great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
+people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
+youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
+have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
+seemed to her that she could not.</p>
+
+<p>She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
+Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
+through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
+affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She alone
+knew whether pride helped her, perhaps had helped to prompt her, to
+reticence, to concealment. She had been Claude Heath's great friend. The
+jealousies of women are strong. She knew herself free from jealousy. But
+another woman, even her own daughter, might misunderstand. It was bitter
+to think so, but she did think so. And her lips were sealed. Beneath the
+more human fears in her crouched a fear that seemed apart, almost
+curiously isolated and very definite, the fear for Claude Heath's
+strange talent.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of the house-warming, as they sat together hearing the
+laughter, the buzz of talk, from those near them; as, a moment later,
+they heard those sounds diminish upon the narrow staircase, when
+everybody but themselves trooped down gaily to "play with a little food
+unceremoniously," as Charmian expressed it, Mrs. Mansfield found herself
+thinking of her first visit to the big studio in Mullion House, and of
+those Kings of the East whom the man beside her had made to live in her
+warm imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Claude said, when the human sounds in the house came up
+from under their feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"From to-morrow!" she answered, looking at him with her strong, intense
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"From to-morrow&mdash;yes, Madre?"</p>
+
+<p>She put her thin and firm hand on his.</p>
+
+<p>"Life begins again, the life of work put off for a time. To-morrow you
+take it up once more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;yes!"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about the pretty room, listened to the noise of the gaieties
+below them. Distinctly he heard Max Elliot's genial laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said. "I must start again on something. The question is,
+what on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you have something in hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had. But&mdash;well, I've left it for so long that I don't know whether I
+could get back into the mood which enabled me to start it. I don't
+believe I could somehow. I think it would be best to begin on something
+quite fresh."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that. Do you think you will like the new workroom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian has made it very pretty and cozy," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>His imaginative eyes looked suddenly distressed, almost persecuted, and
+he raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"She is very clever at creating prettiness around her," he continued,
+after an instant of silence, during which Mrs. Mansfield looked down.
+"It is quite wonderful. And how energetic she is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Charmian can be very energetic when she likes. Adelaide Shiffney
+never turned up to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"She telegraphed this morning that she had to go over unexpectedly to
+Paris. Something to do with the Senniers probably. You know how devoted
+she is to him. And now he is the rage in America, Charmian says. Every
+day I expect to hear that Mrs. Shiffney had sailed for New York."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, but not quite naturally.</p>
+
+<p>"What a change in his life that evening at Covent Garden made!" he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>"And what a change in yours!" was Mrs. Mansfield's thought.</p>
+
+<p>"He found himself, as people call it, on that night, I sup<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>pose," she
+said. "He is one of those men with a talent made for the great public.
+And he knew it, perhaps, for the first time that night. He is launched
+now on his destined career."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe in destiny?"</p>
+
+<p>She detected the sadness she had surprised in his eyes in his voice now.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps in our making of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather than in some great Power's imposing of it upon us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's so difficult to know! When I was a child we had a game we
+loved. We went into a large room which was pitch dark. A person was
+hidden in it who had a shilling. Whichever child found that person had
+the shilling. There were terror and triumph in that game. It was
+scarcely like a game, it roused our feelings so strongly."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not everyone's destiny to find the holder of the shilling," said
+Claude.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment their eyes met. Claude suddenly reddened.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I? Does she suspect? Does she know?" went through his mind. And
+even Mrs. Mansfield felt embarrassed. For in that moment it was as if
+they had spoken to each other with a terrible frankness despite the
+silence of their lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Shan't we go down?" said Claude. "Surely you want something to eat,
+Madre?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, really. And I like a quiet talk with my new son."</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing, but she saw the strong affection in his face, lighting
+it, and she knew Claude loved her almost as a son may love a perfect
+mother. She wished that she dared to trust that love completely. But the
+instinctive reserve of the highly civilized held her back. And she only
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You must not let marriage interfere too much with your work, Claude. I
+care very much for that. For years your work was everything to you. It
+can't be that, it oughtn't to be that now. But I want your marriage with
+Charmian to help, not to hinder you. Be true to your own instinct in
+your art and surely all must go well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. To-morrow I must make a fresh start. I could never be an
+idler. I must&mdash;I must try to use life as food for my art!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was speaking out his thought of the night when he wrote his letter to
+Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.</p>
+
+<p>"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
+the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
+Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
+well?"</p>
+
+<p>He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
+his lack of love for her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
+with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
+felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
+not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
+vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
+marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
+honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
+mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
+to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
+suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
+his right dealing rewarded beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
+become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
+And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
+the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
+with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
+salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
+her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
+who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
+of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
+them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
+things in his life work together for good.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.</p>
+
+<p>When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
+before the wood fire&mdash;she insisted on wood instead of coal&mdash;in the first
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
+aren't sleepy, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.</p>
+
+<p>"It went off well, didn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were
+clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a
+yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it
+looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her
+face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think it did."</p>
+
+<p>"They all liked you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad!"</p>
+
+<p>"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
+You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or
+not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like
+yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max
+Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had suddenly changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not
+without surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of
+her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after
+accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she
+rushed off to Paris like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max
+Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."</p>
+
+<p>Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather
+silly&mdash;in a man."</p>
+
+<p>"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I never said there was. But still&mdash;Margot is rather tiresome, too, with
+her rages first for this person and then for the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."</p>
+
+<p>"Still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I
+believe, just to hear the <i>Paradis</i> once at the Metropolitan. Five days
+out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put
+in the <i>Daily Mail</i>. And then she says she can't think how things about
+her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"</p>
+
+<p>"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"
+said Claude, with a sort of still decision.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? In what way am I odd?"</p>
+
+<p>"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You
+are."</p>
+
+<p>She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession,
+something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very
+restive and intensely reserved.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you are. I know."</p>
+
+<p>His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a
+rush of words.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with
+those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part
+of themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Do women?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a
+cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> possessed him, the undressed
+sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to
+himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to
+me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as
+if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do
+something to stop it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette
+in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the
+drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion
+House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat
+writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze,
+dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the
+back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At
+the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury
+held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was
+dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious
+Morris tiles, representing &AElig;neas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in
+the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in
+dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It
+showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out
+with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the assumed dreaminess
+which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs,
+the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a
+charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, very."</p>
+
+<p>"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> Madre only this
+evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you? How nice of you."</p>
+
+<p>She laid her cheek against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be able to work here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's shut the door, and just <i>feel</i> the room for a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>He shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us speak for a moment," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting now on the deep sofa just beyond the writing-table.
+Claude stood quite still. And in the silence which followed her words he
+strove to realize whether he would be able to work in the little room.
+Would anything come to him here? His eyes rested on Anchises, crouched
+on the back of his son, on the burning city of Troy. He felt confused,
+strange, and then <i>d&eacute;pays&eacute;</i>. That word alone meant what he felt just
+then. Ah, the little house with the one big room looking out on to the
+scrap of garden, yellow-haired Fan, Harriet discreet unto dumbness, Mrs.
+Searle with her scraps of wisdom&mdash;he with his freedom!</p>
+
+<p>The room was a cage, wire bars everywhere. Never could he work in it!</p>
+
+<p>"It is good for work, isn't it, Claudie? Even poor little I can feel
+that. What wonderful things you are going to do here. As wonderful as&mdash;"
+She checked herself abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"As what?" he asked, striving to force an interest, to banish his secret
+desperation.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't tell you now. Some day&mdash;in a year, two years&mdash;I'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes shone. He thought they looked almost greedy.</p>
+
+<p>"When my man's done something wonderful!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>In Charmian's conception of the perfect helpmate for a great man
+self-sacrifice shone out as the first of the virtues. She must sacrifice
+herself to Claude, must regulate her life so that his might glide
+smoothly, without any friction, to the appointed goal. She must be
+patient, understanding, and unselfish. But she must also be firm at the
+right moment, be strong in judgment, be judicious, the perfect critic as
+well as the ardent admirer. During her life among clever and well-known
+men she had noticed how the mere fact of marriage often seems to make a
+man think highly of the intellect of his chosen woman. Again and again
+she had heard some distinguished writer or politician, wedded to
+somebody either quite ordinary, or even actually stupid, say: "I'd take
+my wife's judgment before anyone's," or "My wife sees more clearly for a
+man than anyone I know." She had known painters and sculptors submit
+their works to the criticism of women totally ignorant in the arts,
+simply because those women had had the faultless taste to marry them. If
+such women exercised so strong an influence over their men, what should
+hers be over Claude? For she had been well educated, was trained in
+music, had always moved in intellectual and artistic sets, and was
+certainly not stupid. Indeed, now that the main stream of her life was
+divided from her mother's, she often felt as if she were decidedly
+clever. Susan Fleet, long ago, had roused up her will. Since that day
+she had never let it sleep. And her success in marrying Claude had made
+her rely on her will, rely on herself. She was a girl who could "carry
+things through," a girl who could make of life a success. As a young
+married woman she showed more of assurance than she had showed as an
+unmarried girl. There was more of decision in her expression and her way
+of being. She was resolved to impress the world, of course for her
+husband's sake.</p>
+
+<p>Life in the house in Kensington had to be arranged for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Claude with
+every elaborate precaution. That must be the first move in the campaign
+secretly planned out by Charmian, and now about to be carried through.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the house-warming, when a late breakfast was
+finished, but while they were still at the breakfast-table in the long
+and narrow dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square, Charmian
+said to her husband:</p>
+
+<p>"I've been speaking to the servants, Claude. I've told them about being
+very quiet to-day."</p>
+
+<p>He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked. "I mean why specially to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because of your composing. Alice is a good girl, but she is a little
+inclined to be noisy sometimes. I've spoken to her seriously about it."</p>
+
+<p>Alice was the parlor-maid. Charmian would have preferred to have a man
+to answer the door, but she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she
+had done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said nothing, Charmian
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>"And another thing! I've told them all that you're never to be disturbed
+when you're in your own room, that they're never to come to you with
+notes, or the post, never to call you to the telephone. I want you to
+feel that once you are inside your own room you are absolutely safe,
+that it is sacred ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Charmian."</p>
+
+<p>He pushed his cup farther away, with a movement that was rather brusque,
+and got up.</p>
+
+<p>"What about lunch to-day? Do you eat lunch when you are composing? Do
+you want something sent up to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall want any lunch to-day. You
+see we've breakfasted late. Don't bother about me."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie. But would you like a cup of
+coffee, tea, anything at one o'clock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do."</p>
+
+<p>He made a movement. Charmian got up.</p>
+
+<p>"I do long to know what you are going to work on," she said, in a
+changed, almost mysterious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since I first heard your music&mdash;you remember, two days after we
+were engaged&mdash;I've longed to be able to do a little something to help
+you on. You know what I mean. In the woman's way, by acting as a sort of
+buffer between you and all the small irritations of life. We who can't
+create can sometimes be of use to those who can. We can keep others from
+disturbing the mystery. Let me do that. And, in return, let me be in the
+secret, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude stood rather stiffly under her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"You are kind, good. But&mdash;but don't make any bother about me in the
+house. I'd rather you didn't. Let everything just go on naturally. I
+don't want to be a nuisance."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't be. And you will let me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;when I know it myself."</p>
+
+<p>He made a little rather constrained laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"One's got to think, try. One doesn't always know directly what one
+wishes to do, can do."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not."</p>
+
+<p>She took away her hands gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I don't exist till you want me to again."</p>
+
+<p>Claude went up to the little room at the back of the house. At this
+moment he would gladly, thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
+that he was expected to go there. Five women, his wife and the four
+maids, expected him to go there. So he went. He shut himself in, and
+remained there, caged.</p>
+
+<p>It was a still and foggy day of frost. In the air, even within the
+house, there was a feeling of snow, light, thin, and penetrating. London
+seemed peculiarly silent. And the silence seemed to have something to do
+with the fog, the frost, and the coming snow. When the door of his room
+was shut Claude stood by his table, then before the fire, feeling
+curiously empty headed, almost light headed. He stared at the fire,
+listened to its faint crackling, and felt as if his life were a hollow
+shell.</p>
+
+<p>Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time&mdash;he did not know
+whether for five minutes or an hour&mdash;when he was made self-conscious by
+an event in the house. He heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> two women's voices in conversation,
+apparently on the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>One of them said:</p>
+
+<p>"The duster, I tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>The other replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't leave it. Ask Fanny, can't you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fanny doesn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to know, then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ought yourself! Fanny's no business with the duster no more than&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was
+Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:</p>
+
+<p>"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.
+Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If
+you must speak, go downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then
+again silence.</p>
+
+<p>Claude came away from the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Your master is at work."</p>
+
+<p>He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost
+of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the
+devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he
+was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be
+doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen
+discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid
+musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her
+lap. And he ground his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't&mdash;I can't&mdash;I never shall be able to!"</p>
+
+<p>He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.
+When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed,
+photographed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing
+vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came
+up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by
+distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began,
+continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle
+of a phrase.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had
+rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in
+the land without light.</p>
+
+<p>The master was working.</p>
+
+<p>But the master was not working.</p>
+
+<p>Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was
+doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
+atmosphere created by Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>One thing specially troubled him.</p>
+
+<p>So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
+perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
+effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
+"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
+golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
+never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.</p>
+
+<p>But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
+young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
+lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
+this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
+he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
+rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
+account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
+art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
+sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
+masculinity.</p>
+
+<p>This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
+home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
+He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
+until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
+the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
+maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
+sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.</p>
+
+<p>During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
+for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
+Square, was to be social. Women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> can do very much in the social way. And
+she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
+it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
+"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
+man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
+was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
+"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
+destined to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
+surprised at the match. They recognized the worldly instinct in Charmian,
+which many of them shared, and could not quite understand why she had
+chosen Claude Heath as her husband. They had not heard much of him. He
+never went anywhere, was personally unknown to them. It seemed rather
+odd. They had scarcely thought Charmian Mansfield would make that kind
+of marriage. Of course he was a thorough gentleman, and a man with
+pleasant, even swiftly attractive manners. But still&mdash;! The general
+verdict was that Charmian must have fallen violently in love with the
+man.</p>
+
+<p>She felt the feelings of the "set." And she felt that she must justify
+her choice as soon as possible. To the set Claude Heath was simply a
+nobody. Charmian meant to turn him into a somebody.</p>
+
+<p>This turning of Claude into a somebody was to be the first really
+important step in her campaign on his behalf. It must be done subtly,
+delicately, but it must be done swiftly. She was secretly impatient to
+justify her choice.</p>
+
+<p>She had at first relied on Max Elliot to help her. He was an
+enthusiastic man and had influence. Unluckily she soon found that for
+the moment he was so busy adoring Jacques Sennier that he had no time to
+beat the big drum for another. Sennier had carried him off his feet, and
+Madame Sennier had "got hold of him." The last phrase was Charmian's. It
+was speedily evident to her that, womanlike, the Frenchwoman was not
+satisfied with the fact of her husband's immense success. She was
+determined that no rival should spring up to divide adorers into camps.
+No doubt she argued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> that there is in the musical world only a limited
+number of discriminating enthusiasts, capable of forming and fostering
+public opinion, of "giving a lead" to the critics, and through them to
+the world. She wanted them all for her husband. And their allegiance
+must be undivided. Although she was in New York, she had Max Elliot "in
+her pocket" in London. It was a feat which won Charmian's respect, but
+which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when
+she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was
+concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment
+want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a
+pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had
+taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of
+friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various
+admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had
+said, an extraordinary woman, had a keen eye to the main chance. She
+acted as a sort of agent to her husband, and was reported on all hands
+to be capable of driving a very hard bargain. She and Max Elliot were
+perpetually cabling to each other across the Atlantic, and Max was
+seriously thinking of imitating Margot Drake and "running over" to New
+York on the <i>Lusitania</i>. Only his business in London detained him. He
+spoke of Sennier invariably as "Jacques," of Madame Sennier as
+"Henriette." Living English composers scarcely existed any more in his
+sight. France was the country of music. Only from France could one
+expect anything of real value to the truly cultured.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian began to hate this absurd entente cordiale.</p>
+
+<p>Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide
+Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs.
+Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was
+married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs.
+Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on
+their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was,
+musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner
+there had been nobody to play upon feminine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> nerves as the little
+Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known
+society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears
+Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs.
+Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no
+use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the
+Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with
+Cowes.</p>
+
+<p>The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly.</p>
+
+<p>But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men
+have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the
+flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently
+began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get
+a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious
+talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on
+the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly
+herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom,"
+unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent
+nobody would pay any attention to what she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of
+work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed.
+She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude
+was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard
+his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the
+scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not
+the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind.
+The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the
+direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what
+he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park
+Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise,
+without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out
+definitely what sort of composition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> he was working on at the present
+moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame
+Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more
+<i>engou&eacute;e</i> than ever.</p>
+
+<p>She had been as straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her
+individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present
+only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and
+even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the
+most curious features of Sennier's vogue was the worship accorded by
+women as well as by men to his dominating wife. They talked and thought
+almost as much about her as they did about him. And though his was the
+might of genius, hers seemed to be the might of personality. The
+perpetual chanting of the Frenchwoman's praises had "got upon"
+Charmian's nerves. She felt this afternoon as if she could not bear it
+much longer, unless some outlet was provided for her secret desires. And
+she arrived at Kensington Square in a condition of suppressed nervous
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>She paid the driver of the taxi-cab and rang the bell. She had forgotten
+to take her key. Alice answered the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mr. Heath in?" asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been playing golf, ma'am. But he's just come in," answered Alice,
+a plump, soft-looking girl, with rather sulky blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course! It's Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday Claude generally took a half-holiday, and went down to
+Richmond to play golf with a friend of his who lived there, an old
+Cornish chum called Tregorwan.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Heath?" continued Charmian, standing in the little hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Having his tea in the drawing-room, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care
+about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.
+Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques
+Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she
+remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little
+room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she
+realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state,
+and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the
+wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily
+nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and
+red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a
+musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.
+Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped
+up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.
+Don't you want more light?"</p>
+
+<p>"I like the firelight."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down again and lifted the teapot.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember we're dining with Madre!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;to be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"But not till half-past eight."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles
+to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy
+for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one
+thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical
+hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now
+that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal
+golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot
+back from New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she enjoy her visit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Immensely. She's&mdash;as she calls it&mdash;tickled to death with the Americans
+in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was
+there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques
+Sennier."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said,
+seriously, even earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most
+enthusiastic nation in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."</p>
+
+<p>How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy
+in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!</p>
+
+<p>She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:</p>
+
+<p>"How is the work getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:</p>
+
+<p>"The work?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yours."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that
+sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this
+embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care
+for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you
+would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I? When?"</p>
+
+<p>"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And
+now it's nearly two months."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and
+lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern,
+almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood
+in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment
+almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, surely&mdash;surely&mdash;why should you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it could never be that&mdash;the work of another."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I want to identify myself with you."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last
+Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the
+voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've
+been in my room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't been working on anything."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't been working at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Not working!"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;you must&mdash;but we were all so quiet! I told Alice&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I never asked you to."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but of course&mdash;but what have you been doing up there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Reading Carlyle's <i>French Revolution</i> most of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"</p>
+
+<p>In her voice there was a sound of outrage. Claude got up and stood by
+the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't my fault," he said. "The truth is I can't work in that room. I
+can't work in this house."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's our home."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but I can't work in it. Perhaps it's because of the maids,
+knowing they're creeping about, wondering&mdash;I don't know what it is. I've
+tried, but I can't do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;how dreadful! Nearly two months wasted!"</p>
+
+<p>He felt that she was condemning him, and a secret anger surged through
+him. His reserve, too, was suffering torment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Charmian. But I couldn't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"But then, why did you go up and shut yourself in day after day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hoped to be able to do something."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I saw you expected me to go."</p>
+
+<p>The truth was out. Claude felt, as he spoke it, as if he were tearing
+off clothes. How he loathed that weakness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> his, which manifested
+itself in the sometimes almost uncontrollable instinct to give, or to
+try to give, others what they expected of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Expected you! But naturally&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. Well, that's how it is! I can't work in this house."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke almost roughly now.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to assume any absurd artistic pose," he continued. "I hate
+the affectations sometimes supposed to belong to my profession. But it's
+no use pretending about a thing of this kind. There are some places,
+some atmospheres, if you like to use the word generally used, that help
+anyone who tries to create, and some that hinder. It's not only a matter
+of place, I suppose, but of people. This house is too small, or
+something. There are too many people in it. I feel that they are all
+bothering and wondering about me, treading softly for me." He threw out
+his hands. "I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm paralyzed here. I
+suppose you think I'm half mad."</p>
+
+<p>To his great surprise, she answered, in quite a different voice from the
+voice which had suggested outrage:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; great artists are always like that. They are always
+extraordinary."</p>
+
+<p>There was a mysterious pleasure, almost gratification, in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You would be like that. I should have known."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as to that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, Claudie. You needn't say any more."</p>
+
+<p>Claude turned rather brusquely round to face the fire. As he said
+nothing, Charmian continued:</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be done now? We have taken this house&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He wheeled round.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we shall stay in this house. It suits us admirably. Besides,
+to move simply because&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your work comes before all."</p>
+
+<p>He compressed his lips. He began to hate his own talent.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the best thing to do," he said, "would be for me to look for a
+studio somewhere. I could easily find one, put a piano and a few chairs
+in, and go there every day to work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> Lots of men do that sort of thing.
+It's like going to an office."</p>
+
+<p>"Capital!" she said. "Then you'll be quite isolated, and you'll get on
+ever so fast. Won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think probably I could work."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will. Before we married you worked so hard. I want"&mdash;she got
+up, came to him, and put her hand in his&mdash;"I want to feel that marriage
+has helped you, not hindered you, in your career. I want to feel that I
+urge you on, don't hold you back."</p>
+
+<p>Claude longed to tell her to leave him alone. But he thought of coming
+isolation in the studio, and refrained. Bending down, he kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be all right," he said, "when I've got a place where I can be
+quite alone for some hours each day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>With an energy that was almost feverish, Charmian threw herself into the
+search for a studio. The little room had been a failure, through no
+fault of hers. She must make a success of the studio. She and Claude set
+forth together, and soon bent their steps toward Chelsea. There were
+studios to be had in Kensington, of course. But Claude happened to
+mention Chelsea, and at once Charmian took up the idea. The right
+atmosphere&mdash;that was the object of this new quest, the end and aim of
+their wanderings. If it were to be found in Chelsea, then in Chelsea
+Claude must make his daily habitation. Charmian seconded the Chelsea
+proposition with an enthusiasm that was almost a little anxious. Chelsea
+was so picturesque, so near the river, that somber and wonderful heart
+of London. Such interesting and famous people lived in Chelsea now, and
+had lived there in the past. She wondered they had not decided to live
+in Chelsea instead of in Kensington. But Claude was right, unerring in
+his judgment. Of course the studio must be in Chelsea.</p>
+
+<p>One was found not far from Glebe Place, in a large red building with an
+arched entrance, handsome steps, and several artistic-looking windows,
+with leaded panes and soda-water bottle grass. It was on the ground
+floor, but it was quiet, large but not enormous, and well-planned. It
+contained however, one unnecessary, though not unattractive, feature. At
+one end, on the left of the door, there was a platform reached by a
+flight of steps, and screened off with wood from the rest of the room.
+The caretaker, who had the key and showed them round, explained that
+this had been planned and put up by an Austrian painter, who used the
+chamber formed by the platform and the upper part of the screen as a
+bedroom, and the space below, roofed by the platform as a kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The rent was one hundred pounds a year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This seemed too much to Claude. He felt ashamed to spend such a large
+sum on what must seem an unnecessary caprice to the average person, even
+probably to people who were above the average. If he were known as a
+composer, if he were popular or famous, the matter, he felt, would be
+quite different. Everyone understands the artistic needs of the famous
+man, or pretends to understand them. But Claude and his work were
+entirely unknown to fame. And now, as he hesitated about the payment of
+this hundred pounds, he regretted this, as he had never before regretted
+it.</p>
+
+<p>But Charmian was strong in her insistence upon his having this
+particular studio. She saw he had taken a fancy to it.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you feel there's the right atmosphere here," she said. "I can
+see you do. It would be fatal not to take this studio if you have that
+feeling. Never mind the expense. We shall get it all back in the
+future."</p>
+
+<p>"Back in the future!" he said, as if startled. "How?"</p>
+
+<p>She saw she had been imprudent, had made a sort of slip.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Some day when your father&mdash;But don't let's talk of
+that. A hundred a year is not very much. It will only mean not quite so
+many new hats and dresses for me."</p>
+
+<p>Claude flushed, suddenly and violently.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian! You can't suppose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely a wife has the right to do something to help her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't need&mdash;I mean, I could never consent&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She made a face at him, drawing down her brows, and turning her eyes to
+the left where the caretaker stood, with a bunch of keys in his large,
+gouty, red hands. Claude said no more. As they went out Charmian smiled
+at the caretaker.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going to take it. My husband likes it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am. It's a mighty fine studio. The Baron was sorry to leave it,
+but he had to go back to Vi-henner."</p>
+
+<p>"I see."</p>
+
+<p>"Now the next thing is to furnish it," said Charmian, as they walked
+away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall only want my piano, a chair, and a table," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>It was only by making a very great effort that he was able to speak
+naturally, with any simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," he added quickly, "it's really too expensive. A hundred a
+year is absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"If it were two hundred a year it wouldn't be a penny too much if you
+really like it, if you will feel happy and at home in it. I'm going to
+furnish it for you, quite simply, of course. Just rugs and a divan or
+two, and a screen to shut out the door, two or three pretty comfortable
+chairs, some draperies&mdash;only thin ones, nothing heavy to spoil the
+acoustics&mdash;a few cushions, a table or two. Oh, and you must have a
+spirit-lamp, a little <i>batterie de cuisine</i>, and perhaps a tea-basket."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear Charmian&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, old boy! You have genius, but you don't understand these things.
+These are the woman's things. I shall love getting together everything.
+Surely you don't want to spoil my little fun. I've made a failure of
+your workroom in Kensington. Do let me try to make a success of the
+studio."</p>
+
+<p>What could Claude do but thank her, but let her have her way?</p>
+
+<p>The studio was taken for three years and furnished. For days Charmian
+talked and thought of little else. She was prompted, carried on, by two
+desires&mdash;one, that Claude should be able to work hard as soon as
+possible; the other, that people should realize what an energetic,
+capable, and enthusiastic woman she was. The Madame Sennier spirit
+attended her in her goings out and her comings in, armed her with
+energy, with gaiety, with patience.</p>
+
+<p>When at length all was ready, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, to-morrow I want you to do something for me."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Of course I will do it. You've been so good, giving up
+everything for the studio."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had really given up several parties, and explained why she
+could not go to them to inquiring hostesses of the "set."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I want you to let us <i>pendre la cr&eacute;maill&egrave;re</i> to-morrow evening all
+alone, just you and I together."</p>
+
+<p>"In the studio?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but"&mdash;he smiled, then laughed rather awkwardly&mdash;"but what could
+we do there all alone? What is there to do? And, besides, there's that
+party at Mrs. Shiffney's to-morrow night. We were both going to that."</p>
+
+<p>"We could go there afterward if we felt inclined. But&mdash;I don't know that
+I want to go to Adelaide Shiffney just now."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;only perhaps, remember&mdash;I'll tell you to-morrow night in the
+studio."</p>
+
+<p>She assumed in the last words that the matter was settled, and Claude
+raised no further objection. He saw she was set upon the carrying out of
+her plan. There was will in her long eyes. He could not help fancying
+that either she had some surprise in store for him, or that she meant to
+do, or say, something extremely definite, which she had already decided
+upon in her mind, to-morrow in the studio.</p>
+
+<p>He felt slightly uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Charmian looked distinctly mysterious, and
+rather as if she wished Claude to notice her mystery. He ignored it,
+however, though he realized that some plan must be maturing in her head.
+His suspicion of the day before was certainly well founded.</p>
+
+<p>"What about this evening, Charmian?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we are going to <i>pendre la cr&eacute;maill&egrave;re</i>. You remember we decided
+yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"Before or after dinner? And what about Mrs. Shiffney?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I thought we might go to the studio about half-past seven or
+eight. Could you meet me there&mdash;say at half-past seven?"</p>
+
+<p>"Meet you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I've got to go out in that direction and could take it on the way
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. But dinner? That's just at dinner-time&mdash;not that I care."</p>
+
+<p>"We could have something when we get home. I can tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> Alice to put
+something in the dining-room for us. There's that pie, and we can have a
+bottle of champagne to drink success to the studio, if we want it."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mrs. Shiffney's given up?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can see how we feel. She only asked us for eleven. We can easily
+dress and go, it we want to."</p>
+
+<p>So it was settled.</p>
+
+<p>As Claude had not yet begun to work he took a long and solitary walk in
+the afternoon. He made his way to Battersea Park, and spent nearly two
+hours there. That day he felt as if a crisis, perhaps small but very
+definite, had arisen in his life. For some five months now he had been
+inactive. He had lost the long habit of work. He had allowed his life to
+be disorganized. No longer had he a grip on himself and on life. From
+to-morrow he must get that grip again. In the isolation of the studio he
+would surely be able to get it. Yet he felt very doubtful. He did not
+know what he wanted to do. He seemed to have drifted very far away from
+the days when his talent, or his genius, spoke with no uncertain voice,
+dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt.
+He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The
+Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to
+music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days
+stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what
+was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently
+passed not a few with the <i>French Revolution</i>. But the evenings of
+course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian.
+He was beginning to know something of the society in which she had
+always lived. There were many pleasant, some charming, people in it. He
+found a certain enjoyment in the little dinners, the theater parties,
+even in the few receptions he had been to. But he was obliged to
+acknowledge to himself that, when in this society, he disliked the fact
+that he was an unknown man. This society did not give him the incentive
+to do anything great. On the other hand it made him dislike being&mdash;or
+was it only seeming?&mdash;small. Charmian's attitude, too, had often
+rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He
+had been conscious of a lurking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely
+repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But
+he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her
+position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he
+were closely connected with it, though he had not quite understood how.</p>
+
+<p>All this now rose up, seemed to spread out before his mind as he walked
+in Battersea Park. And he said to himself, "It can't go on. I simply
+must get to work on something. I must get a grip on myself and my life
+again." He remembered the heat of his soul after he had heard Jacques
+Sennier's opera, the passion almost to do something great that had
+glowed in him, the longing for fame. Then he had said to himself: "My
+life shall feed my art. I'll live, and by living I'll achieve." Out of
+that heat no rare flower had arisen. He had come out into the world. He
+had married Charmian, had travelled in Italy. And that was all.</p>
+
+<p>That day he was angry with himself, was sick of his idle life. But he
+did not feel within him the strong certainty that he would be able to
+take his life in hand and transform it, which drives doubt and sorrow
+out of a man. He kept on saying, "I must!" But he did not say, "I
+shall!"</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that the mainspring was missing from the watch. Claude was
+living as if he loved, but he was not loving.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past seven he passed up the handsome steps and under the arch
+which led to his studio.</p>
+
+<p>The caretaker with gouty hands met him. This man had been a soldier, and
+still had a soldier's eyes, and a way of presenting himself, rather
+sternly and watchfully, to those arriving in "my building," as he called
+the house full of studios, which was military. But gout, and it is to be
+feared drink, had long ago made him physically flaccid, and mentally
+rather sulky and vague. He looked a wreck, and as if he guessed that he
+was a wreck. An artist on the first floor had labelled him, "The
+derelict looking for tips to the offing."</p>
+
+<p>"The lady's here, sir," he observed, on seeing Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Been 'ere"&mdash;he sometimes dropped an aitch and sometimes did not&mdash;"this
+half hour."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fact apparently surprised him, almost indeed upset him.</p>
+
+<p>"This 'alf hour," he repeated, this time dropping the aitch to make a
+change.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Claude, disdaining the explanation which seemed to be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, leaving the guardian to his gout.</p>
+
+<p>The studio was lit up, and directly Claude opened the door he smelt
+coffee and something else&mdash;sausages, he fancied. At once he guessed why
+Charmian had arranged to meet him at the studio, instead of going there
+with him. He shut the door slowly. Yes, certainly, sausages.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!" he called.</p>
+
+<p>She came out from behind the screen, dressed in a very plain,
+workmanlike black gown, over which she was wearing a large butcher blue
+apron. Her sleeves were turned up and her face was flushed. Claude
+thought she looked younger than she usually did.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cooking the dinner," she replied, in a practical voice. "It will be
+ready in a minute. Take off your coat and sit down."</p>
+
+<p>She turned round and disappeared. Something behind the screen was
+hissing like a snake.</p>
+
+<p>Claude now saw a table laid in the middle of the studio. On a rough
+white cloth were plates, knives, and forks, large coffee cups with
+flowers coarsely painted on a gray ground with a faint tinge of blue in
+it, rolls of bread, butter, a cake richly brown in color. A vase of
+coarse, but effective pottery, full of scented wild geranium, stood in
+the midst. Claude took off hat and coat, hung them up on a hook, and
+glanced around.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly Charmian had arranged the furniture well, chosen it well, too.
+The place looked cosy, and everything was in excellent taste. There was
+comfort without luxury. Claude felt that he ought to be very grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice cried out from behind the screen, and she appeared bearing a
+large dish full of smoking sausages, which she set down on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for the eggs and the coffee!" she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another moment and they were on the table, too, with a plateful of
+buttered toast.</p>
+
+<p>"Studio fare!" she said, taking off the blue apron, pulling down her
+sleeves, and looking at Claude. "Are you surprised?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was for the first moment."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I had felt sure you were up to something, that you had some
+scheme in your head, some plan for to-day. But I didn't connect it with
+sausages."</p>
+
+<p>Her expression changed slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it isn't only sausages. But it begins with them. Are you
+hungry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, very. I've been walking in Battersea Park."</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie, how awful!"</p>
+
+<p>They sat down and fell to&mdash;Charmian's expression. She was playing at the
+Vie de Boh&egrave;me, but she thought she was being rather serious, that she
+was helping to launch Claude in a new and suitable life. And behind the
+light absurdity of this quite unnecessary meal there was intention,
+grave and intense. The wasted two months must be made up for, the hours
+given to the <i>French Revolution</i> be redeemed. This meal was only the
+prelude to something else.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it good?" she asked, as Claude ate and drank.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent! Where have you been to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen Madre and Susan Fleet."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Fleet at last."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It is so tiresome her moving about so much. I care for her more
+than for any woman in London. All this time she's been in Paris doing
+things for Adelaide Shiffney."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Madre know about to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell her? Why not have asked her to come? We belong to
+her and she to us. It would have been natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I love Madre. But I didn't want even her to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Claude realized that he was assisting at a prelude. But he only said:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she is going to Mrs. Shiffney's to-night?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>When they had finished Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll clear away."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you mustn't. I want you to sit down in that cosy chair there, and
+light your cigar&mdash;oh, or your pipe! Yes, to-night you must smoke a
+pipe."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't brought it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, a cigar. I won't be long."</p>
+
+<p>She began clearing the table. Claude obediently drew out his cigar-case.
+He still felt uneasy. What was coming? He could not tell. But he felt
+almost sure that something was coming which would distress his secret
+sensitiveness, his strong reserve.</p>
+
+<p>He lit a cigar, and sat down in the armchair Charmian had indicated. She
+flitted in and out, removing things from the table, shook out and folded
+the rough white cloth, laid it away somewhere behind the screen, and at
+last came to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>The studio was lit up with electric light.</p>
+
+<p>"There's too much light," she said. "Don't move. I'll do it."</p>
+
+<p>She went over to the door, and turned out two burners, leaving only one
+alight.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that ever so much better?" she said, coming to sit down near
+Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, perhaps it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Cosier, more intime."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down with a little sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to have a cigarette."</p>
+
+<p>She drew out a thin silver case, opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"A teeny Russian one."</p>
+
+<p>Claude struck a match. She put the cigarette between her lips, and
+leaned forward to the tiny flame.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment of silence she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you couldn't work in the little room. If you had been able to
+we should never have had this."</p>
+
+<p>"We!" thought Claude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And," she continued, "I feel this is the beginning of great things for
+you. I feel as if, without meaning to, I'd taken you away from your
+path, as if now I understood better. But I don't think it was quite my
+fault if I didn't understand. Claudie, do you know you're terribly
+reserved?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>He shifted in his chair, took the cigar out of his mouth, and put it
+back again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, aren't you? Two whole months, and you never told me you couldn't
+work."</p>
+
+<p>"I hated to, after you'd taken so much trouble with that room."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But, still, directly you did tell me, I perfectly understood.
+I"&mdash;she spoke with distinct pressure&mdash;"I am a wife who can understand.
+Don't you remember that night at Jacques Sennier's opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I understand then? At the end when they were all applauding?
+I've got your letter, the letter you wrote that night. I shall always
+keep it. Such a burning letter, saying I had inspired you, that my love
+and belief had made you feel as if you could do something great if you
+changed your life, if you lived with me. You remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."</p>
+
+<p>Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get
+back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that
+letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter
+back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that
+Charmian had turned out those two burners.</p>
+
+<p>"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from
+that night."</p>
+
+<p>Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of
+love? Was she going to tax him with it?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was
+a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that
+high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a
+genius."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man,
+which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of
+melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words
+intensified it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he
+said, with a bluntness not usual in him.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget
+things Max Elliot has said about you&mdash;long ago. And Madre thinks&mdash;I know
+that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some
+of your things."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She
+had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But
+this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian
+had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian
+about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he
+felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had
+been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and
+permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness
+which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night,
+however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to
+bring up battalions of will.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But
+I don't think they are for everybody."</p>
+
+<p>"For everybody! How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me
+for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public
+which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of
+Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier&mdash;our own Elgar, too! What I mean is
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> perhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few.
+There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost
+frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you."</p>
+
+<p>She was thinking of the Burningtons, the Drakes, of other
+Sennier-worshippers.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it is partly because of the words you set," she added. "Great
+words, of course. But where can they be sung? Not everywhere. And people
+are so strange about the Bible."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange about the Bible!"</p>
+
+<p>"English people, and even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of
+queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio."</p>
+
+<p>She paused. Claude said nothing. He was feeling hot all over.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help wishing, for your own sake, that you wouldn't always go to
+the Bible for your inspiration."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay it is very absurd of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie, you could never be absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody can be absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"I could never think you absurd. But I suppose everyone can make a
+mistake. It seems to me as if there are a lot of channels, some short,
+ending abruptly, some long, going almost to the center of things. And
+genius is like a liquid poured into them. I only want you to pour yours
+into a long channel. Is it very stupid, or perverse, of me?"</p>
+
+<p>As she said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine
+intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable
+by man.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Charmian, of course not. So you think I've been pouring into a very
+short channel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I've never thought about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. It wants another to do that, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely."</p>
+
+<p>"You care for strange things. One can see that by your choice of words.
+But there are strange and wonderful words not in the Bible. The other
+day I was looking into Rossetti's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> poems. I read <i>Staff and Scrip</i> again
+and <i>Sister Helen</i>. There are marvellous passages in both of those. I
+wish sometimes you'd let me come in here, when you're done working, and
+make tea for you, and just read aloud to you anything interesting I come
+across."</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of a new connection between husband and wife, the
+beginning also of a new epoch in Claude's life as a composer.</p>
+
+<p>When they left the studio that night he had agreed to Charmian's
+proposal that she should spend some of her spare time in looking out
+words that might be suitable for a musical setting, "in your peculiar
+vein," as she said. By doing this he had abandoned his complete liberty
+as a creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his
+wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on
+his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the
+something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or
+spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled
+liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man
+may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through
+long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which
+instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or
+strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's
+definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to
+become more definite.</p>
+
+<p>They were in Kensington by ten o'clock that night. Charmian was in high
+spirits. A strong hope was dawning in her. Already she felt almost like
+a collaborator with Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Let us dress and go to
+Adelaide Shiffney's."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," replied Claude. "By the way, what were you going to tell me
+about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>And they went up to dress.</p>
+
+<p>There was a crowd in Grosvenor Square. A good many people were still
+abroad, but there were enough in London to fill Mrs. Shiffney's
+drawing-rooms. And notorieties, beauties, and those mysterious nobodies
+who "go everywhere" until<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> they almost succeed in becoming somebodies,
+were to be seen on every side. Charmian perceived at once that this was
+one of Adelaide's non-exclusive parties. Mrs. Shiffney seldom
+entertained on a very large scale.</p>
+
+<p>"One bore, or one frump, can ruin a party," was a favorite saying of
+hers. But even she, now and then, condescended to "clear people off."
+Charmian realized that Adelaide was making a clearance to-night.</p>
+
+<p>Since her marriage with Claude she had not been invited to No. 14
+B&mdash;Mrs. Shiffney's number in the Square&mdash;before.</p>
+
+<p>As she came in to the first drawing-room and looked quickly round she
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>"She is clearing off me and Claude."</p>
+
+<p>And for a moment she wished they had not come. Her old horror of being
+numbered with the great crowd of the undistinguished came upon her once
+more. Then she thought of the conversation in the studio, and she
+hardened herself in resolve.</p>
+
+<p>"He shall be famous. I will make him famous, whether he wishes it, cares
+for it, or not."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney was not standing close to the first door to "receive"
+solemnly. She could not "be bothered" to do that. The Heaths presently
+came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>In the room just beyond a small orchestra was playing. This was a sure
+sign of a "clearance" party. Mrs. Shiffney never had an orchestra
+playing alone, and steadily, through an evening unless bores and frumps
+were present. "Hungarians in distress" she called these uniformed
+musicians, "trying to help bores in distress and failing inevitably."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to Charmian with a faintly ironic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad to see you. Ah, Mr. Heath&mdash;Benedick as the married man. I
+expect you are doing something wonderful as one hears nothing about you.
+The deep silence fills me with expectation."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again, and turned to speak to an old lady with fuzzy white
+hair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One of the fuzzywuzzies who go to private views, and who insist on
+knowing me once a year for my sins."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's lips tightened as she walked slowly on.</p>
+
+<p>She met many people whom she knew, too many; and that evening she felt
+peculiarly aware of the insignificance of Claude and herself, combined
+as a "married couple," in the eyes of this society. What were they? Just
+two people with fifteen hundred a year and a little house near
+Kensington High Street. As an unmarried girl in Berkeley Square, with a
+popular mother, possibilities had floated about her. Clever, rising men
+came to that house. She had charm. She was "in" everything. Now she felt
+that a sort of fiat had been pronounced, perhaps by Adelaide Shiffney,
+and her following, "Charmian's dropping out."</p>
+
+<p>No doubt she exaggerated. She was half conscious that she was
+exaggerating. But there was surely a change in the attitude people
+adopted toward her. She attributed it to Mrs. Shiffney. "Adelaide hates
+Claude," she said to herself, adding a moment later the woman's reason,
+"because she was in love with him before he married me, and he wouldn't
+look at her." Such a hatred of Adelaide's would almost have pleased her,
+had not Adelaide unfortunately been so very influential.</p>
+
+<p>Claude caught sight of Mrs. Mansfield and went to join her, while
+Charmian spoke to Lady Mildred Burnington, and then to Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Mildred, whose eyes looked more feverish even than usual, and whose
+face was ravaged, as if by some passion or sorrow for ever burning
+within her, had a perfunctory manner which fought with her expression.
+Her face was too much alive. Her manner was half dead. Only when she
+played the violin was the whole woman in accord, harmonious. Then truth,
+vigor, intention emerged from her, and she conquered. To-night she spoke
+of the prospects for the opera season, looking about her as if seeking
+fresh causes for dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be dull," she said. "Covent Garden has things all its own
+way, and therefore it goes to sleep. But in June we shall have Sennier.
+That is something. Without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> him it would really not be worth while to
+take a box. I told Mr. Brett so."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?" asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"One Sennier makes a summer."</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that Max Elliot came up, looking as he nearly
+always did, cheerful and ready to be kind.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said to Lady Mildred, "you're complaining about the opera.
+I've just been with the Admiral."</p>
+
+<p>"Hilary knows less about music than even the average Englishman."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's been swearing, and even&mdash;saving your presence&mdash;cursing by
+Strauss."</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks that places him with the connoisseurs. It's his ambition to
+prove to the world that one may be an Admiral and yet be quite
+intelligent, even have what is called taste. He declines to be a
+sea-dog."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's only living up to you. But have you really no hope of the
+opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very little&mdash;unless Sennier saves the situation."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he anything new?" asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot looked happily evasive.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Sennier says he hasn't."</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to have a rival enterprise here as they have in New York at
+present," said Lady Mildred.</p>
+
+<p>"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era,"
+said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that
+seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in
+England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Arrived to-day by the <i>Lusitania</i> in search of talent, of someone who
+can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him
+at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the
+enemy's camp."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by
+"commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could
+be such a keen and concentrated partisan.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> a murmur to get
+Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is
+Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.</p>
+
+<p>"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.
+Margot Drake is speaking to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Margot&mdash;of course! But I can't see them."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot moved.</p>
+
+<p>"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;that little man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."</p>
+
+<p>"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford
+is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous
+men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his
+way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last
+fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him
+point and even charm as a man."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you
+know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Do introduce me to him."</p>
+
+<p>She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face,
+and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney
+kept him in conversation. Margot Drake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> stood close to him, and fixed
+her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul
+Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were
+converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite
+understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which
+marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she
+repeated quietly, but with determination:</p>
+
+<p>"Please introduce me to him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm,
+to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who
+will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not
+been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew
+that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes
+in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But
+she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of
+his personality.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown
+eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head
+which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined
+features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was
+intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be
+unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a
+carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a
+faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to
+grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather
+surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.
+His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve
+links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first
+introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his
+eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong
+imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His
+eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little
+brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance
+which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It
+showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to
+be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I
+wanted to know the great fighter."</p>
+
+<p>She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some
+people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave
+her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it
+suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do
+with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows
+sometimes suddenly upward.</p>
+
+<p>"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he
+said, speaking rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it isn't true."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.
+Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his
+<i>Paradis Terrestre</i>, and it altered my whole life."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another
+Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope you'll be successful."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man
+can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you
+interested in music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Intensely."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating
+whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain.
+Something told her to refrain, and she added:</p>
+
+<p>"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition.
+And it's going to be a bigger proposition than most people dream of."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes flashed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wait till I build an opera house in London, something better than that
+old barn of yours over against the Police Station."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to build an opera house here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? But I've got to find some composers. They're somewhere about.
+Bound to be. The thing is to find them. It was a mere chance Sennier
+coming up. If he hadn't married his wife he'd be starving at this
+minute, and I'd be licking the Metropolitan into a cocked hat."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian longed to put her hand on the little man's arm and to say:</p>
+
+<p>"I've married a musician, I've married a genius. Take him up. Give him
+his chance."</p>
+
+<p>But she looked at those big brown eyes which confronted her under the
+twitching eyebrows. And now that the flash was gone she saw in them the
+soul of the business man. Claude was not a "business proposition." It
+was useless to speak of him yet.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you'll find your composer," she said quietly, almost with a
+dainty indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Then someone came up and claimed Crayford with determination.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pretty girl," he remarked. "Is she married? I didn't catch her
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she's married to an unknown man who composes."</p>
+
+<p>"The devil she is!"</p>
+
+<p>The lips above the tiny beard stretched in a smile that was rather
+sardonic.</p>
+
+<p>Before going away Charmian wanted to have a little talk with Susan
+Fleet, who was helping Mrs. Shiffney with the "fuzzywuzzies." She found
+her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and
+angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her
+toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with
+her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss
+Gretch, as her companion was called, surprisingly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Gretch, who was drinking claret cup, and eating little rolls which
+contained hidden treasure of p&acirc;t&eacute; de foie gras, bowed and smiled with
+anxious intensity, then abruptly became unnaturally grave, and gazed
+with a sort of piercing attention at Charmian's hair, jewels, gown, fan,
+and shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"She seems to be memorizing me," thought Charmian, wondering who Miss
+Gretch was, and how she came to be there.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here just a minute, will you?" said Susan Fleet. "Adelaide wants
+me, I see. I'll be back directly."</p>
+
+<p>"Please be sure to come. I want to talk to you," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>As Susan Fleet was going she murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Gretch writes for papers."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned to the angular guest with a certain alacrity. They
+talked together with animation till Susan Fleet came back.</p>
+
+<p>A week later, on coming down to breakfast before starting for the
+studio, Claude found among his letters a thin missive, open at the ends,
+and surrounded with yellow paper. He tore the paper, and three newspaper
+cuttings dropped on to his plate.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" he said to Charmian, who was sitting opposite to him.
+"Romeike and Curtice! Why should they send me anything?"</p>
+
+<p>He picked up one of the cuttings.</p>
+
+<p>"It's from a paper called <i>My Lady</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it about?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to be an account of Mrs. Shiffney's party, with something
+marked in blue pencil, 'Mrs. Claude Heath came in late with her
+brilliant husband, whose remarkable musical compositions have not yet
+attained to the celebrity which will undoubtedly be theirs within no
+long time. The few who have heard Mr. Heath's music place him with
+Elgar, Max Reger, and Delius.' Then a description of what you were
+wearing. How very ridiculous and objectionable!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked furious and almost ashamed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here's something else! 'A Composer's Studio,' from <i>The World and His
+Wife</i>. It really is insufferable."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? What can it say?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Claude Heath, the rising young composer, who recently married the
+beautiful Miss Charmian Mansfield, of Berkeley Square, has just rented
+and furnished elaborately a magnificent studio in Renwick Place,
+Chelsea. Exquisite Persian rugs strew the floor&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>Claude stopped, and with an abrupt movement tore the cuttings to pieces
+and threw them on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"What can it mean? Who on earth&mdash;&mdash;? Charmian, do you know anything of
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, with a sort of earnest disgust, mingled with surprise,
+"it must be that dreadful Miss Gretch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dreadful Miss Gretch! I never heard of her. Who is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Adelaide Shiffney's the other night Susan Fleet introduced me to a
+Miss Gretch. I believe she sometimes writes, for papers or something. I
+had a little talk with her while I was waiting for Susan to come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell her about the studio?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see! Did I? Yes, I believe I did say something. You see, Claude,
+it was the night of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it was. But how could you&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I suppose things said in a private conversation would ever
+appear in print? I only said that you had a studio because you composed
+and wanted quiet, and that I had been picking up a few old things to
+make it look homey. How extraordinary of Miss Gretch!"</p>
+
+<p>"It has made me look very ridiculous. I am quite unknown, and therefore
+it is impossible for the public to be interested in me. Miss Gretch is
+certainly a very inefficient journalist. Elgar! Delius too! I wonder she
+didn't compare me with Scriabine while she was about it. How hateful it
+is being made a laughing-stock like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nobody reads those papers, I expect. Still, Miss Gretch&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Gretch! What a name!" said Claude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His anger vanished in an abrupt fit of laughter, but he started for the
+studio in half an hour looking decidedly grim. When he had gone Charmian
+picked up the torn cuttings which were lying on the carpet. She had been
+very slow in finishing breakfast that day.</p>
+
+<p>Since her meeting with Jacob Crayford her mind had run perpetually on
+opera. She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the
+man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big
+proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put
+Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against
+Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being
+actively searched for. If only Claude had written an opera! If only he
+would write an opera now!</p>
+
+<p>Charmian never doubted her husband's ability to do something big. Her
+instinct told her that he had greatness of some kind in him. His music
+had deeply impressed her. But she was sure it was not the sort of thing
+to reach a wide public. It seemed to her against the trend of taste of
+the day. There was an almost terrible austerity in it, combined, she
+believed, with great power and originality. She longed to hear some of
+it given in public with the orchestra and voices. She had thought of
+trying to "get hold of" one of the big conductors, Harold Dane, or
+Vernon Randall, of trying to persuade him to give Claude a hearing at
+Queen's Hall. Then a certain keen prudence had held her back. A voice
+had whispered, "Be patient!" She realized the importance of the first
+step taken in public. Jacques Sennier had been utterly unknown in
+England. He appeared as the composer of the <i>Paradis Terrestre</i>. If he
+had been known already as the composer of a number of things which had
+left the public indifferent, would he have made the enormous success he
+had made? She remembered Mascagni and his <i>Cavalleria</i>, Leoncavallo and
+his <i>Pagliacci</i>. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any
+rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful
+for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in
+arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like
+Jacob Crayford kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> a sharp look-out for fresh talent. He read all that
+appeared about new composers of course. Or someone read for him. Even
+"that dreadful Miss Gretch's" lucubrations might come under his notice.</p>
+
+<p>For a week now Claude had gone every day after breakfast to the studio.
+Charmian had not yet disturbed him there. She felt that she must handle
+her husband gently. Although he was so kind, so disposed to be
+sympathetic, to meet people half way, she knew well that there was
+something in him to which as yet she had never probed, which she did not
+understand. She was sufficiently intelligent not to deceive herself
+about this, not to think that because Claude was a man of course she, a
+woman, could see all of him clearly. The hidden something in her husband
+might be a thing resistent. She believed she must go to work gently,
+subtly, even though she meant to be very firm. So she had let Claude
+have a week to himself. This gave him time to feel that the studio was a
+sanctum, perhaps also that it was a rather lonely one. Meanwhile, she
+had been searching for "words."</p>
+
+<p>That task was a difficult one, because her mind was obsessed by the
+thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her.
+She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly
+"plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was
+more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words.
+But the music of Claude's which she knew was joined with words. And he
+must do something with words. For that, as it were, would lead the way
+toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set
+some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he
+might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a
+violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued.
+And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically,
+descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for
+opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent for such work, that
+he was not drawn toward the theater. But if she could lead him gradually
+toward things essentially dramatic, she might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> wake up in him forces the
+tendency of which he had never suspected.</p>
+
+<p>She re-read Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William
+Morris,&mdash;Wordsworth no&mdash;into Fiona Macleod, William Watson, John
+Davidson, Alfred Noyes. Now and then she was strongly attracted by
+something, she thought, "Will it do?" And always at such moments a
+vision of Jacob Crayford seemed to rise up before her, with large brown
+eyes, ears like a faun, nervous hands, and the tiny beard. "Is it a
+business proposition?" The moving lips said that. And she gazed again at
+the poem which had arrested her attention, she thought, "Is it a
+business proposition?" Keats's terribly famous <i>Belle Dame Sans Merci</i>
+really attracted her more than anything else. She knew it had been set
+by Cyril Scott, and other ultra-modern composers, but she felt that
+Claude could do something wonderful with it. Yet perhaps it was too well
+known.</p>
+
+<p>One lyric of William Watson's laid a spell upon her:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Pass, thou wild heart,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wild heart of youth that still</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hast half a will</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To stay.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I grow too old a comrade, let us part.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Pass thou away."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>She read that and the preceding verse again and again, in the grip of a
+strange and melancholy fascination, dreaming. She woke, and remembered
+that she was young, that Claude was young. But she had reached out and
+touched old age. She had realized, newly, the shortness of the time. And
+a sort of fever assailed her. Claude must begin, must waste no more
+precious hours; she would take him the poem of William Watson, would
+read it to him. He might make of it a song, and in the making he would
+learn something perhaps&mdash;to hasten on the path.</p>
+
+<p>She started for the studio one day, taking the <i>Belle Dame</i>, William
+Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine,
+Montesquiou, Mor&eacute;as.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She arrived in Renwick Place just after four o'clock. She meant to make
+tea for Claude and herself, and had brought with her some little cakes
+and a bottle of milk. Quite a load she was carrying. The gouty hands of
+the caretaker went up when he saw her.</p>
+
+<p>"My, ma'am, what a heavy lot for you to be carrying!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm strong. Mr. Heath's in the studio?"</p>
+
+<p>Before the man could reply she heard the sound of a piano.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he is. Is there water there? Yes. That's right. I'm going to
+boil the kettle and make tea."</p>
+
+<p>She went on quickly, opened the door softly, and slipped in.</p>
+
+<p>Claude, who sat with his back to her playing, did not hear her. She
+crept behind the screen into what she called "the kitchen." What fun!
+She could make the tea without his knowing that she was there, and bring
+it in to him when he stopped playing.</p>
+
+<p>As she softly prepared things she listened attentively, with a sort of
+burning attention, to the music. She had not heard it before. She knew
+that when her husband was composing he did not go to the piano. This
+must be something which he had just composed and was trying over. It
+sounded to her mystic, remote, very strange, almost like a soul
+communing with itself; then more violent, more sonorous, but always very
+strange.</p>
+
+<p>The kettle began to boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked
+two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that? Who's there?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude had stopped playing abruptly. His voice was the voice of a man
+startled and angry.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" he repeated loudly.</p>
+
+<p>She heard him get up and come toward the screen.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie, do forgive me! I slipped in. I thought I would make tea for
+you. It's all ready. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was waiting
+till you had finished. I'm so sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"You, Charmian!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was an odd remote expression in his eyes, and his whole face
+looked excited.</p>
+
+<p>"Do&mdash;do forgive me, Claudie! Those dreadful spoons!"</p>
+
+<p>She picked them up.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. What are all these books doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I brought them. I thought after tea we might talk over words. You
+remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Well&mdash;but I've begun on something."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you playing it just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some of it."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Francis Thompson's <i>The Hound of Heaven</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Crayford&mdash;what would he think of that sort of thing?</p>
+
+<p>"You know it, don't you?" Claude said, as she was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I've read it, but quite a while ago. I don't remember it well. Of
+course I know it's very wonderful. Madre loves it."</p>
+
+<p>"She was speaking of it at the Shiffney's the other night. That's why it
+occurred to me to study it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh. Well, now you have stopped shall we have tea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've done enough for to-day."</p>
+
+<p>After tea Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll study <i>The Hound of Heaven</i> again. But now do you mind if I read
+you two or three of the things I have here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said kindly, but not at all eagerly. "Do read anything you
+like."</p>
+
+<p>It was six o'clock when Charmian read Watson's poem "to finish up with."
+Claude who, absorbed secretly by the thought of his new composition, had
+listened so far without any keen interest, at moments had not listened
+at all, though preserving a decent attitude and manner of attention,
+suddenly woke up into genuine enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me that, Charmian!" he exclaimed. "I scarcely ever write a song.
+But I'll set that."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him the book eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>That evening they were at home. After dinner Claude went to his little
+room to write some letters, and Charmian read <i>The Hound of Heaven</i>. She
+decided against it. Beauti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>ful though it was, she considered it too
+mystic, too religious. She was sure many people could not understand it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish Madre hadn't talked to Claude about it," she thought. "He thinks
+so much of her opinion. And she doesn't care in the least whether Claude
+makes a hit with the public or not."</p>
+
+<p>The mere thought of the word "hit" in connection with Mrs. Mansfield
+almost made Charmian smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there's something dreadfully vulgar about me," she said to
+herself. "But I belong to the young generation. I can't help loving
+success."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield had been the friend, was the friend, of many successful
+men. They came to her for sympathy, advice. She followed their upward
+careers with interest, rejoiced in their triumphs. But she cared for the
+talent in a man rather than for what it brought him. Charmian knew that.
+And long ago Mrs. Mansfield had spoken of the plant that must grow in
+darkness. At this time Charmian began almost to dread her mother's
+influence upon her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She was cheered by a little success.</p>
+
+<p>Claude set Watson's poem rapidly. He played the song to Charmian, and
+she was delighted with it.</p>
+
+<p>"I know people would love that!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"If it was properly sung by someone with temperament," he replied. "And
+now I can go on with <i>The Hound of Heaven</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart sank.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only a little afraid they may think you are imitating Elgar," she
+murmured after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Imitating Elgar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that you are, or ever would do such a thing. It isn't your music,
+it's the subject, that makes me a little afraid. It seems to me to be an
+Elgar subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Really!"</p>
+
+<p>The conversation dropped, and was not resumed. But a fortnight later,
+when Charmian came to make tea in the studio, and asked as to the
+progress of the new work, Claude said rather coldly:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going on with it at present."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She saw that he was feeling depressed, and realized why. But she was
+secretly triumphant at the success of her influence, secretly delighted
+with her own cleverness. How deftly, with scarcely more than a word, she
+had turned him from his task. Surely thus had Madame Sennier influenced,
+guided her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I could do anything with Claude," she said to herself that
+day.</p>
+
+<p>"Play me your Watson song again, Claudie," she said. "I do love it so."</p>
+
+<p>"It's only a trifle."</p>
+
+<p>"I love it!" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down at the piano and played it to her once more. When he had
+finished she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I've found someone who could sing that gloriously."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Playing the song had excited him. He turned eagerly toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"A young American who has been studying in Paris. I met him at the
+Drakes' two or three days ago. Mr. Jacob Crayford, the opera man, thinks
+a great deal of him, I'm told. Let me ask him to come here one day and
+try the <i>Wild Heart</i>. May I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"And meanwhile what are you working on instead of <i>The Hound of
+Heaven</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude's expression changed. He seemed to stiffen with reserve. But he
+replied, with a kind of elaborate carelessness:</p>
+
+<p>"I think of trying a violin concerto. That would be quite a new
+departure for me. But you know the violin was my second study at the
+Royal College."</p>
+
+<p>"That won't do," thought Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"If only Kreisler would take it up when it is finished as he took up&mdash;"
+she began.</p>
+
+<p>Claude interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p>"It may take me months, so it's no use thinking about who is to play it.
+Probably it will never be played at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why compose it?" she nearly said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But she did not say it. What was the use, when she had resolved that the
+concerto should be abandoned as <i>The Hound of Heaven</i> had been?</p>
+
+<p>She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the
+studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang the <i>Wild Heart</i>,
+tried it a second time, became enthusiastic about it. His voice was a
+baritone, and exactly suited the song. He begged Claude to let him sing
+the song during the season at the parties for which he was engaged. They
+studied it together seriously. During these rehearsals Charmian sat in
+an armchair a little way from the piano listening, and feeling the
+intensity of an almost feverish anticipation within her.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused
+Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she
+listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages
+again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a
+sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She
+ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing
+quite near, almost close to her.</p>
+
+<p>"People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely
+it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving
+love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away
+from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long,
+from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself
+perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to
+the light that illumined the goal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square
+was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and
+Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a
+couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended
+to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the
+H&ocirc;tel St. George at Mustapha Sup&eacute;rieur, and from there to prosecute
+their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle
+down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music,
+containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's
+hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying
+on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than
+England's.</p>
+
+<p>This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.</p>
+
+<p>The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word.
+During the past London season he had sung Claude's <i>Wild Heart of Youth</i>
+everywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed
+in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It
+was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the
+public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a
+singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
+composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
+attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
+of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
+fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
+inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
+drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
+floating on a pool that had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> depths, responded to the applause, to the
+congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
+concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
+of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
+his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
+too much&mdash;that is his surface enjoyed too much&mdash;the pleasure it gave,
+the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
+congratulations of easily touched women.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
+in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
+that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
+made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
+working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
+blossomed with expectation.</p>
+
+<p>Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
+lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
+surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.</p>
+
+<p>His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
+sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
+he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
+opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
+Metropolitan.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
+Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
+wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
+bullier."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The devil's own ambition."</p>
+
+<p>Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
+of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
+had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
+His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
+vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>belled, then
+had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving
+his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for
+business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he
+hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly
+threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or
+nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford
+took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's
+charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and
+resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that
+intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.</p>
+
+<p>"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just
+got to, and that's all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.</p>
+
+<p>He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the
+American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of
+shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young
+determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of
+Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness.
+He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved
+intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a
+lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at
+once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon
+Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the
+studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there.
+He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He
+had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music
+very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the
+screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."</p>
+
+<p>This young and determined enthusiast had a power of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> flooding others
+with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made
+his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the
+goods."</p>
+
+<p>Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the
+sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a
+new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among
+them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's
+determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes,
+and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that
+astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness.
+When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to
+blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win
+Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path
+which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with
+Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which
+had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced
+his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul,
+but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very
+un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the
+complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the
+obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love
+of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as
+he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an
+egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical
+development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.</p>
+
+<p>"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no
+doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera,
+and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.</p>
+
+<p>Having launched the song with success, Alston Lake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> naturally wished to
+hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He
+was interested in it, admired it. But&mdash;and here his wholly unconscious
+egoism came into play&mdash;he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of
+belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words
+from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or
+training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said
+straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing
+her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved
+and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come
+out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about
+art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which
+he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to
+compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both
+meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely
+diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent
+was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of
+pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake
+in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up
+like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which
+they urged Claude to walk.</p>
+
+<p>He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting
+of the <i>Belle Dame Sans Merci</i> for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But
+before it was finished&mdash;and during the season his time for work was
+limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and
+Alston Lake involved him&mdash;an event took place which had led directly to
+the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob
+Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve.
+And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his
+patron hearing Claude's song.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big
+proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness
+for Lake, and Lake's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some
+attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time.
+But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently
+this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet.
+But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was
+something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was
+Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her
+"darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her
+husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you
+wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the
+little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he
+hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about
+running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."</p>
+
+<p>"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed
+Charmian demurely.</p>
+
+<p>From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on
+an opera.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had
+come to London again in June. The <i>Paradis Terrestre</i> had been revived
+at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night
+in his studio.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and
+had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on
+their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of
+his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped
+for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking
+lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no bent toward the theater."</p>
+
+<p>Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>shaved, with gray
+eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and
+rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box,
+and glanced at Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs.
+Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, old chap?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean I hardly know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston
+triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark
+hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more
+definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She
+glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening
+she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost
+miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly
+dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said
+nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and
+up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."</p>
+
+<p>"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting
+managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that
+fires him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I think," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music
+and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly
+always in agreement.</p>
+
+<p>"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the
+big lad&mdash;he looked little more than a lad&mdash;good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was
+Crayford."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet.
+He's going to make me."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Takes two to do it!"</p>
+
+<p>Again he looked over to Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera
+singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be.
+Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to
+me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who
+knows&mdash;<i>knows</i>, mind you&mdash;to put him in the right way. What is wanted
+nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here,
+I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted
+Crayford to hear your big things"&mdash;Claude shifted in his chair,
+stretched out his legs and drew them up&mdash;"I told him about them and how
+strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At
+least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the
+nail&mdash;but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for
+the goods, you know&mdash;'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the
+Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to
+explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than
+Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said
+was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me
+a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how
+to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as
+Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a
+success we've had with the song!"</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>I</i> found him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I
+know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to
+Paris&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like,
+my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing
+at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?"
+said Alston. "Didn't you win&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go&mdash;go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a
+mock despair.</p>
+
+<p>He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as
+a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit
+to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris
+with Alston Lake."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.</p>
+
+<p>Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let
+his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto,
+written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served
+for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then
+studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong.
+There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the
+whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and
+Lake so.</p>
+
+<p>"It would need to be as Oriental in the score as <i>Louise</i> is French," he
+said. "And what do I know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a
+couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford
+says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or
+two."</p>
+
+<p>"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by
+Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what
+they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."</p>
+
+<p>And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of
+scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston
+Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in
+London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all
+his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already
+been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the
+most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless
+energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him
+was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room,
+with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had
+been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews
+itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into
+the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously
+exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all
+the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man
+among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be
+gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object
+now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object
+when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any
+object in working&mdash;in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing
+itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was
+created he had passed on to something else.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very
+strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light
+surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of
+dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but
+solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached
+to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via
+Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the hall-table.
+Two letters for him, and&mdash;ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and
+Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful
+Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his
+name was fairly often in the papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and
+artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near
+Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly
+unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was
+wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall.
+Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had
+become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted
+to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his
+"interests." And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become
+accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very
+grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she&mdash;was
+she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants
+that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in
+Algiers when they were quite alone together?</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her
+eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.</p>
+
+<p>As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought
+she looked very sad.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for
+a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him.
+He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want me."</p>
+
+<p>"If!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not quite sure that you will."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out
+into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which
+till that moment he had scarcely been aware?</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I
+know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed
+to be within reach of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily
+never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are
+withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>He moved rather uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still&mdash;still we
+sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not
+natural to us."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from
+unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen
+our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means
+of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"What means?"</p>
+
+<p>"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to
+us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> if we can incorporate
+it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it
+continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.
+I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I
+expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes
+sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.</p>
+
+<p>"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."</p>
+
+<p>She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of
+Romeike and Curtice.</p>
+
+<p>"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear,
+slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A
+year&mdash;two years, perhaps&mdash;out of the world! It will be a new experience
+for me, won't it, Madretta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite new."</p>
+
+<p>The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall see the island with you."</p>
+
+<p>"The island?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember&mdash;the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined
+here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in
+an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about
+the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.
+But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and
+sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again,
+better than the truth, because <i>I</i> was added to them. Don't you
+remember, Claudie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, now I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to do that where I could not do it."</p>
+
+<p>Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from
+her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Charmian and her husband went first to the H&ocirc;tel St. George at Mustapha
+Sup&eacute;rieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there
+for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a
+hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up
+the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in
+Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money
+to throw away.</p>
+
+<p>During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of
+work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in
+upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That
+spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to
+his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which,
+carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life
+running its course in the darkness of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.
+And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The
+phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted
+her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England
+or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their
+time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the
+production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly
+with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of
+"steeping" her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had
+sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be
+worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She
+honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she
+was so keenly, so incessantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> alive to the reason of their coming to
+Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their
+coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was
+sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to
+his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to
+Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his
+precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.</p>
+
+<p>But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.
+You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first
+she began to assert herself in your art life."</p>
+
+<p>And he kept silence.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's
+love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish
+from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.</p>
+
+<p>She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too
+concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as
+she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was
+it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another&mdash;a not
+completely hidden reason?</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the
+garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in
+England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a
+Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian,
+and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the
+edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.</p>
+
+<p>And presently she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."</p>
+
+<p>Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the
+curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned
+on the seat and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Something in his eyes almost startled her.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an
+expression which made her feel almost uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Something here"&mdash;she almost faltered, called on her will, and
+continued&mdash;"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here
+some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>She thought his voice sounded insincere.</p>
+
+<p>"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here
+for our honeymoon."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of it. I wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."</p>
+
+<p>"And now the right time has come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, now it has come."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That
+curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had
+troubled her spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down
+the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red
+roses in his earthy hand.</p>
+
+<p>He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the
+garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw
+him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was
+hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener
+spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and
+blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he
+seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with
+the old man and began to talk with him.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.</p>
+
+<p>That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Robert!"</p>
+
+<p>"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things
+about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests
+me&mdash;us&mdash;is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year,
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> good repair, pure Arab in style, so
+he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But
+there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here
+in the best part of Mustapha Inf&eacute;rieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it rather late?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, let us go to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude,
+and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the
+high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the
+hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one
+could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de
+Man&oelig;uvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of
+the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old
+Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the
+white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two
+tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the
+roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden
+door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was
+roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small
+stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the
+bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The
+house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles,
+confronted them, holding its many secrets.</p>
+
+<p>"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it will do."</p>
+
+<p>She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its
+mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the
+faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with
+multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the
+low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery
+running right round it from which the few small bedrooms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> opened by low
+black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a
+background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables
+suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness
+and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
+into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
+when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
+him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
+addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
+been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
+formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
+the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
+Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
+purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
+distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
+opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
+the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
+lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
+a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
+beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
+time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
+curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
+tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
+dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
+of the crowding houses of the town.</p>
+
+<p>It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
+the studio in Renwick Place.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.</p>
+
+<p>The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
+containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
+dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
+Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
+geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
+and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
+astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
+Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
+house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
+soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
+at Staou&euml;li; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
+and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently
+fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief
+which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little
+woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets,
+charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on
+her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the
+courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had
+first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had
+always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to
+the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone.
+She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed
+in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the
+future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had
+had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to
+whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes,
+tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his
+orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him.
+It was her r&ocirc;le to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging.
+But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with
+its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and
+because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities,
+passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to
+Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied.
+Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a <i>milieu</i>
+where they had no friends, no acquaint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>ances even, except two or three
+casually met in the H&ocirc;tel St. George, and the British Consul-General and
+his wife, who had been to call on them.</p>
+
+<p>Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them
+during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat."
+She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab
+house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had
+carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places
+for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with
+Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost
+overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a
+great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands
+her true feeling abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a
+full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests,
+occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to
+look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now
+confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear.
+He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the
+real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of
+such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so,
+for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his
+life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going
+to do?</p>
+
+<p>Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for
+popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they
+wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But
+now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of
+him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa
+he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of
+every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather
+strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the
+contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who
+would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the
+force which he had often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> felt in London, a force which had often
+secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without
+tonic properties.</p>
+
+<p>With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was
+ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed
+task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He
+laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of
+inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him
+to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of
+work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that
+something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square,
+when he read Carlyle's <i>French Revolution</i> and sometimes felt criminal.
+There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not
+Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were
+broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he
+could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he
+began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do
+a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel
+inclined to or not."</p>
+
+<p>Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in,
+more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of
+living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete
+novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his
+brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual
+activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to
+give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera
+was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!</p>
+
+<p>Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan
+Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on
+theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant
+inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply
+because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she
+had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going"
+to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy
+and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the
+opportunity presented itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater,
+among them <i>The Astral Plane</i>, <i>Reincarnation</i>, <i>Death&mdash;and After?</i> and
+<i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet,
+Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the
+manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no
+propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If
+Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The
+letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When
+Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task
+which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for
+Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for
+herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather
+vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and
+patience. Just now&mdash;indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would
+need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long
+preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's
+with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
+she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
+so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
+Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing <i>Le
+Paradis Terrestre</i>, how long he had taken in the creation of that
+stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.</p>
+
+<p>She had begun with <i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>. The short preface had
+attracted her. "Life easier to bear&mdash;death easier to face." If theosophy
+helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
+inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
+But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
+in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
+she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
+crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
+attention of the world&mdash;they were all so far away.</p>
+
+<p>Resolutely she read <i>The Seven Principles of Man</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then she dipped into <i>Reincarnation</i> and <i>Death&mdash;and After?</i></p>
+
+<p>Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
+received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
+illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
+read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
+with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
+in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
+renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
+traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
+unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
+she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
+thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
+her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint&mdash;as, say,
+Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
+certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
+nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
+hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
+her life.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
+began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.</p>
+
+<p>One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
+above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
+for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
+leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
+dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
+permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
+playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
+be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
+could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
+the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
+family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
+Claude had never seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> him, though he had corresponded with him, and
+sent him a cheque of &pound;100 for his work.</p>
+
+<p>Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
+a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
+handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
+and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
+curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
+covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.</p>
+
+<p>Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
+cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
+son, but who was now resigned to the latter's <i>&eacute;tranges folies</i>. The
+fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
+then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
+down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
+received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
+denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
+ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
+the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
+with him, and preparing him for Claude.</p>
+
+<p>This man must "fire" Claude.</p>
+
+<p>Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
+the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
+mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
+upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of
+good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he
+changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success
+for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality,
+he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eh bien</i>, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked at him and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and
+suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> morbid perhaps?
+Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful
+imaginings?"</p>
+
+<p>Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled
+at the upward-pointing ends.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My
+libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to
+music must have lived also to do it justice."</p>
+
+<p>There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class,
+in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly
+that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized
+the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for
+him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this
+short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help
+Claude to bridge that gulf.</p>
+
+<p>"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after
+happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been
+made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been
+arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided
+that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the
+defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among
+the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome
+India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole
+thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square,
+much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth
+was to become of her.</p>
+
+<p>In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist
+were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where
+Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs.
+Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and
+she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.</p>
+
+<p>She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall
+be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so
+mixed up. Is the motor there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, then."</p>
+
+<p>At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would
+not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the
+motor. She now looked radiant, like one for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> whom life held nothing but
+good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking
+she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how
+handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing
+to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for
+the immediate future.</p>
+
+<p>"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over the <i>&oelig;ufs en
+cocotte</i>, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things
+lively.</p>
+
+<p>"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her
+general expression hardly altered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."</p>
+
+<p>"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last
+thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that
+song of his&mdash;I forget the name, heart something or other&mdash;her head has
+been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's
+sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers, <i>les
+jeunes</i>, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's
+too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too&mdash;Oliver
+Cromwell in Harris tweed!&mdash;she must be mad. Of course even if he ever
+finishes it he will never get it produced."</p>
+
+<p>Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a
+celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden,"
+observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, they had!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider
+facts.</p>
+
+<p>"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of
+sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have,
+in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad
+cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."</p>
+
+<p>"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see
+why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."</p>
+
+<p>She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the
+Algerian visit.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan&mdash;really think, I mean? Do
+you care for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."</p>
+
+<p>Susan smiled. "We are human beings."</p>
+
+<p>"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath
+with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and
+the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest
+me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the
+King and the crossing-sweeper?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."</p>
+
+<p>"In a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Greatly because she is a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"</p>
+
+<p>They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney
+suddenly said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't want to go there."</p>
+
+<p>"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> from Marseilles
+when the yacht is only about half an hour away."</p>
+
+<p>"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."</p>
+
+<p>"I said <i>about</i> half an hour on purpose to be accurate."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.</p>
+
+<p>This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived
+project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to
+Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht.
+Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that
+Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the
+tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had
+convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers,"
+she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the
+beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your
+trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't
+have a comfortable voyage."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a
+trace of vexation.</p>
+
+<p>That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to
+bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to
+Folkestone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and
+to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a
+few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look
+in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get
+away. And you'll see your prot&eacute;g&eacute;, Mr. Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"My prot&eacute;g&eacute;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you were the first to discover him."</p>
+
+<p>"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so
+bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always
+the Heaths' very good friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but his song?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has
+ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred
+words."</p>
+
+<p>"His wife and mother have, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"His wife&mdash;yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there
+came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the
+art of music?"</p>
+
+<p>"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so, <i>mon cher</i>. I don't believe either you or I have a
+right to talk!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a
+moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose.
+Henriette wouldn't like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a
+clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new
+opera's getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at her determined eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot
+of work on hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost
+excited.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New
+York this year."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be
+carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> even into absurdity. But he
+was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or
+taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm
+sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On a brilliant day in the first week of February <i>The Wanderer</i> glided
+into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a
+discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her
+were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and
+Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries
+of "<i>Ah, mon Dieu!</i>" and "<i>O la la l&agrave;!</i>" had been distressing. Madame
+Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child,
+holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady,
+laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a
+moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau
+de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a
+muffler round his meager throat.</p>
+
+<p>"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the
+jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah, mon Dieu! O la la l&agrave;!</i>" replied her celebrated husband.</p>
+
+<p>"My little chicken, you must have courage!"</p>
+
+<p>Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned
+Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the
+simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they
+stepped into the <i>wagon-lit</i> in Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her.
+Rooms had been engaged in advance at the H&ocirc;tel St. George. And Susan
+Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> Max, Susan, about
+tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm
+sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel.
+Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."</p>
+
+<p>These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her
+thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to
+drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where
+the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the
+brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the
+movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods
+from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides,
+failed to rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.</p>
+
+<p>"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a
+week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife,
+speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother
+reassuring a little child.</p>
+
+<p>When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone.
+Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost
+suspiciously, after the first kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's gone to the H&ocirc;tel St. George."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you
+let her come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide hates me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"She does. And you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide
+can be very kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in
+your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read the manuals carefully?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did she come at all?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."</p>
+
+<p>"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I
+quite understand that. But he's not here."</p>
+
+<p>"What has become of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to
+you. But&mdash;well, the truth is"&mdash;she slightly lowered her voice, although
+there was no one in the room&mdash;"he had to go away for the opera. He has
+gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to
+study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a
+big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most
+valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways;
+with the opera, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. Then she added:</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But
+before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course,
+she's on the other side."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"She's on Sennier's side."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in
+a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the
+manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you
+like."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh,
+I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two.
+Of course she knows about the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she does."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never
+mind!"</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the
+sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment
+later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the
+drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max
+Elliot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round
+her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing
+worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful
+face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar
+across it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she&mdash;she is charming; thin and charming."</p>
+
+<p>"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked
+almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and
+shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable,
+even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but
+also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong,
+energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine
+eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments
+full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were
+rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.</p>
+
+<p>"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel
+species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen&mdash;milky
+mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very
+well, too&mdash;should"&mdash;he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently&mdash;"<i>go</i>
+with the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"</p>
+
+<p>The door had opened, and Charmian came in.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole
+face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she
+still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not
+help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+"Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the
+Senniers.</p>
+
+<p>"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously
+you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for
+your genius. We are all longing to see him."</p>
+
+<p>They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the
+opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your
+orchestration?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings
+and the horns to give the effect of water."</p>
+
+<p>"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"About Mr. Heath? Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem
+extraordinary, and added:</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was reluctant.</p>
+
+<p>"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre
+promptly answered with the tea things.</p>
+
+<p>"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in
+the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear
+and telegraph."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in her most airy way.</p>
+
+<p>"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."</p>
+
+<p>"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask
+who wrote the libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His
+name is Gillier."</p>
+
+<p>"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out
+his hands in a gesture of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Do you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three
+libretti by him have I rejected&mdash;three, madame. He challenged me to a
+duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he
+cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband
+accepted?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant
+eyes&mdash;they were yellow eyes, and small&mdash;fixed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was
+clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can
+say!"</p>
+
+<p>"Brave! But why?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."</p>
+
+<p>"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what
+does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"</p>
+
+<p>She had turned to Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously
+ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the
+Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"</p>
+
+<p>She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a
+dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her
+immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because
+she was the hindmost. That was certain.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went
+over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation
+with Madame Sennier.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with
+her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was
+completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red
+mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame
+Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and
+disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge
+that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of
+ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously
+English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply.
+There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian
+felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she,
+Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or
+only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her
+wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered,
+too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was apt to be restless.</p>
+
+<p>"May we go and look about outside?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Shall I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I see you are interested in each other. Two wives of geniuses!
+I don't want to spoil it. Come, Jacques, let us explore."</p>
+
+<p>They went away to the court of the goldfish. Max Elliot followed them.
+As they went Madame Sennier fixed her eyes for a moment on her departing
+husband. In that moment Charmian found out something. Madame Sennier
+certainly cared for the man, as well as for the composer. Charmian
+fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for
+many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that
+she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong
+perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with
+someone far cleverer than herself. And she realized what an effective
+weapon in certain hands is an absolute lack of scruple. It seemed to her
+as she sat and talked, about Paris, America, London, art, music, that
+this woman must have divined her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> secret and intense ambition. Those
+yellow eyes had surely looked into her soul, and knew that she had
+brought Claude to Algeria in order that some day he might come forth as
+the rival of Jacques Sennier. Almost she felt guilty. She made a strong
+effort, and turned the conversation to the subject of the <i>Paradis
+Terrestre</i>, expressing her enthusiasm for it.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier received the praises with an air of gracious
+indifference, as if her husband's opera were now so famous that it was
+scarcely worth while to talk about it. This carelessness accentuated
+brutally the difference between her position and Charmian's. And it
+stung Charmian into indiscretion. Something fiery and impetuous seemed
+to rise up in her, something that wanted to fight. She began to speak of
+her husband's talent.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier listened politely, as one who listens on a height to
+small voices stealing vaguely up from below. Charmian began to underline
+things. It was as if one of the voices from below became strident in the
+determination to be adequately heard, to make its due effect. Finally
+she was betrayed into saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier stared.</p>
+
+<p>"But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my
+husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude
+would have hated the remark had he heard it.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier seemed unimpressed, and at that moment the others came in
+from the garden. But Charmian, why she did not know, felt increasing
+regret for her inadvertence. She even wished that Madame Sennier had
+shown some emotion, surprise, even contemptuous incredulity. The
+complete blankness of the Frenchwoman at that moment made Charmian
+uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>When they were all going Mrs. Shiffney insisted on Charmian and Susan
+Fleet dining at the H&ocirc;tel St. George that evening. Charmian wanted to
+refuse and wished to go. Of course she accepted. She and Susan had no
+engagement to plead.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Sennier clasped her hands on parting and gazed fervently into
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="WE_WIVES" id="WE_WIVES"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img02.jpg"
+             alt="OF COURSE WE WIVES OF COMPOSERS" /><br />
+         <b>"'OF COURSE WE WIVES OF COMPOSERS<br />ARE APT TO BE
+PREJUDICED'"&mdash;<a href='#Page_242'><i>Page 242</i></a></b>
+    </div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let me come sometimes and sit in your garden, may I, Madame?" he said,
+as if begging for some great boon. "Only"&mdash;he lowered his voice&mdash;"only
+till your husband comes back. There is inspiration here!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian knew he was talking nonsense. Nevertheless she glanced round
+half in dread of Madame Sennier. The yellow eyes were smiling. The white
+face looked humorously sarcastic.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Whenever you like!" she said lightly.</p>
+
+<p>The monkeylike hands pressed hers more closely.</p>
+
+<p>"The freedom of Africa, you give it me!"</p>
+
+<p>He whisked round, with a sharp and absurd movement, and joined the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"She is delicious!" he observed, as they walked away. "But she is very
+undeveloped. She has certainly never suffered. And no woman can be of
+much use to an artist unless she has suffered."</p>
+
+<p>"Henriette, have you suffered?" said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly!" said Jacques Sennier, answering for his wife. "But
+unfortunately not through me. That is the great flaw in our connection."</p>
+
+<p>He frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"I must make her suffer!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"My cabbage, you are a little fool and you know it!" observed Madame
+Sennier imperturbably. "<i>Mon Dieu!</i> What dust!"</p>
+
+<p>They had emerged into the road, and were enveloped in a cloud sent up by
+a passing motor.</p>
+
+<p>"If it doesn't rain, or they don't water the roads, I shall run away to
+Constantine," observed Mrs. Shiffney. "There'll be no dust in
+Constantine at this time of year."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just
+sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup
+tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.</p>
+
+<p>"What can that be?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it
+high in his left hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had passed
+the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly
+discussing Charmian's affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had
+enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don't understand how
+it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea&mdash;when
+it's calm&mdash;purifies a room if you open the window to it."</p>
+
+<p>But now, as she waited for Pierre's return, she felt strung up and
+excited.</p>
+
+<p>"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Would he ring?" asked Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But he might!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a
+voice exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi passer, mon bon!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely it's Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past
+Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Me voici!</i>" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> come to you. How
+can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They
+brought me caviare, <i>potage</i>. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
+Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I
+shall not disgrace you."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone&mdash;Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have
+taken me, but I refused to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Where to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Batna, Biskra, <i>que sais-je</i>? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once&mdash;may I?"</p>
+
+<p>Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin
+toward his collar.</p>
+
+<p>"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said
+to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the
+arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot
+write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a
+revolver? It shall not be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said
+Charmian sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara&mdash;<i>que sais-je</i>?
+Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my
+Henriette."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very
+late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the
+piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of
+emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did
+he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey
+and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel
+embarrassed or self-conscious.</p>
+
+<p>At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully
+preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her
+preoccupation down. He was an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> egoist, but a singularly amusing and even
+attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and
+delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great
+success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier
+she was more sharply aware of Claude's reserve than she had ever been
+before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social
+readiness.</p>
+
+<p>When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed,
+she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited,
+intensely excited.</p>
+
+<p>It was past one o'clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on
+the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there,
+except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
+and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He
+resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he
+permitted her to button the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera
+he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his
+hotel.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The
+Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
+Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
+because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
+instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
+coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
+gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
+with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
+she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
+Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
+apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
+returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
+either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
+interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
+they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
+she felt as if she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> been like an angry child when she had talked of
+her husband to Madame Sennier. Women&mdash;clever, influential women&mdash;can do
+much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
+blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
+resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
+wished her "Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I shan't sleep," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."</p>
+
+<p>"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
+of resolving quietly on anything.</p>
+
+<p>She lay awake nearly all night.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
+night-train travelling to Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
+abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
+garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
+to the big terrace, and had said:</p>
+
+<p>"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
+to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
+had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
+to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly
+a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow
+berth in the <i>wagon-lit</i> jolting toward Constantine, he read some of
+Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard
+voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier
+were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That
+fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.</p>
+
+<p>"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> and earth to find a
+genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in <i>les
+jeunes</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques is forty."</p>
+
+<p>"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to
+compose an opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.
+She could never have kept such a thing to herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that
+nobody on earth would ever listen to."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is
+dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame
+Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it can't be."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this
+one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."</p>
+
+<p>"Make him show it to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."</p>
+
+<p>"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath&mdash;or I'll make him."</p>
+
+<p>"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the
+Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a
+hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine,
+and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might
+succeed some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get hold of it for you."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do
+you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>fere with him.
+Nobody but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and
+Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost
+simultaneous hushes.</p>
+
+<p>Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the
+conversation which reached him.</p>
+
+<p>He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to
+their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that
+these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were
+driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something
+secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided
+to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly
+disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of
+other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between
+Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.
+Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd,
+he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish
+that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path
+clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of
+every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.</p>
+
+<p>Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the
+nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very
+little about her.</p>
+
+<p>She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's
+family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness
+that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.
+Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess.
+Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been
+very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had
+throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some
+women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and
+underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.
+She liked intrigue for its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the
+midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When
+she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected
+with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable
+to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques
+was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped
+to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was
+capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.</p>
+
+<p>Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He
+was the only person she trusted&mdash;for a week. She meant to be back at
+Mustapha within a week.</p>
+
+<p>After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for
+the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still
+more when Madame Sennier replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being
+where you are."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney made no reply, but turned carefully over till she was
+looking at the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do I do things for this woman?" was her thought. She had told
+herself more than once that she was travelling to Constantine for
+Henriette. Apparently she was actually beginning to believe her own
+statement. She closed her eyes, opened them again, looked at the
+ceiling, which almost touched her nose, and at the wall, which her nose
+almost touched.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does a woman ever do anything for another woman?" she asked
+herself, amplifying her first thought.</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide Shiffney in an upper berth! It was the incredible
+accomplished!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"What a setting for melodrama!" said Mrs. Shiffney. She was standing on
+the balcony of a corner room on the second floor of the Grand Hotel at
+Constantine, looking down on the Place de la Br&egrave;che. Evening was
+beginning to fall. The city roared a tumultuous serenade to its delicate
+beauty. The voices sent up from the dusty gardens, the squares, and the
+winding alleys, from the teeming bazaars, the dancing-houses, the houses
+of pleasure, and the painted Moorish caf&eacute;s, seemed to grow more defiant
+as the light grew colder on the great slopes of the mountains that
+surround Constantine, as in the folds of the shallow valleys the
+plantations of eucalyptus darkened beside the streams.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier was standing with Mrs. Shiffney and was also looking
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to all the voices!" she said. "Nobody but Jacques could ever get
+this sort of effect into an opera."</p>
+
+<p>A huge diligence, painted yellow, green, and red, with an immense hood
+beneath which crowded Arabs vaguely showed, came slowly down the hill,
+drawn by seven gray horses. The military Governor passed by on
+horseback, preceded by a mounted soldier, and followed by two more
+soldiers and by a Spahi, whose red jacket gleamed against the white coat
+of his prancing stallion. Bugles sounded; bells rang; a donkey brayed
+with dreary violence in a side street. Somewhere a mandoline was being
+thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the
+Paris pavements. In the large caf&eacute;s just below the balcony where the two
+women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables,
+sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the
+Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of
+well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with
+high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered
+looking like conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Cirez! Cirez!"</i> cried incessantly the Arab boot-polishers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> who
+scuffled and played tricks among themselves while they waited for
+customers. "<i>Cirez, moosou! Cirez!</i>" Long wagons, loaded with stone from
+the quarries of the Gorge, jangled by, some of them drawn by mixed teams
+of eleven horses and mules, on whose necks chimed collars of bells.
+Chauffeurs sounded the horns of their motors as they slowly crept
+through the nonchalant crowd of natives, which had gathered in front of
+the post-office and the Municipal Theater to discuss the affairs of the
+day. Maltese coachmen, seated on the boxes of large landaus, cracked
+their whips to announce to the Kabyle Chasseurs of the two hotels the
+return of travellers from their excursions. Omnibuses rolled slowly up
+from the station loaded with luggage, which was vehemently grasped by
+native porters, brought to earth, and carried in with eager violence.
+The animation of the city was intense, and had in it something barbaric
+and almost savage, something that seemed undisciplined, bred of the
+orange and red soil, of the orange and red rocks, of the snow and
+sun-smitten mountains, of the terrific gorges and precipices which made
+the landscape vital and almost terrible.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the evening light the distant slopes, the sharply cut silhouettes
+of the hills, held a strange and exquisitely delicate serenity. The sky,
+cloudless, shot with primrose, blue, and green, deepening toward the
+West into a red that was flecked with gold, was calm and almost tender.
+Nature showed two sides of her soul; but humanity seemed to respond only
+to the side that was fierce and violent.</p>
+
+<p>"What a setting for melodrama!" repeated Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. At that moment the presence of Henriette irritated her. She
+wanted to be alone, leaning to watch this ever-shifting torrent of
+humanity. This balcony belonged to her room. She had revenged herself
+for the upper berth by securing a room much better placed than
+Henriette's. But if Henriette intended to live in it&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she drew back rather sharply. She had just seen, in the midst
+of the crowd, the tall figure of Claude Heath moving toward the caf&eacute;
+immediately opposite to her balcony.</p>
+
+<p>"Is my tea never coming?" she said. "I think I shall get into a tea-gown
+and lie down a little before dinner."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier followed her into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Till dinner, then," she said. "We are sure to see them, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Leave the libretto entirely to me. He would be certain to
+suspect any move on your part."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier's white face looked very hard as she nodded and left the
+room. She met the waiter bringing Mrs. Shiffney's tea at the door.</p>
+
+<p>When she and the waiter were both gone Mrs. Shiffney drank her tea on
+the balcony, sitting largely on a cane chair. She felt agreeably
+excited. Claude Heath had gone into the caf&eacute; on the other side of the
+road, and was now sitting alone at a little table on the terrace which
+projects into the Place beneath the H&ocirc;tel de Paris. Mrs. Shiffney saw a
+waiter take his order and bring him coffee, while a little Arab,
+kneeling, set to work on his boots.</p>
+
+<p>All day long Claude and Gillier had remained invisible. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Henriette, and Max Elliot, after visiting the native quarters in the
+morning, had expected to see the two men at lunch, but they had not
+appeared. Now the two women had just returned from a drive round the
+city and to the suspension bridge which spans the terror of the Gorge.
+And here was Claude Heath just opposite to Mrs. Shiffney, no doubt
+serenely unconscious of her presence in Constantine! As Mrs. Shiffney
+sipped her tea and looked down at him she thought again, "What a setting
+for melodrama!"</p>
+
+<p>She was a very civilized child of her age, and believed that she had a
+horror of melodrama, looking upon it as a degraded form of art, or
+artlessness, which pleased people whom she occasionally saw but would
+never know. But this evening some part of her almost desired it, not as
+a spectacle, but as something in which she could take an active part. In
+this town she felt adventurous. It was difficult to look at this crowd
+without thinking of violent lives and deeds of violence. It was
+difficult to look at Claude Heath without the desire to pay him back
+here with interest for a certain indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not really melodramatic," said Adelaide Shiffney to herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She could resent, but she was not a very good hater. She felt generally
+too <i>affair&eacute;e</i>, too civilized to hate. In her heart she rather disliked
+Claude Heath as once she had rather liked him. He had had the
+impertinence and lack of taste to decline her friendship, tacitly, of
+course, but quite definitely. She had never been in love with him. If
+she had been she would have been more definite with him. But he had
+attracted her a good deal; and she always resented even the crossing of
+a whim. Something in his personality and something in his physique had
+appealed to her, a strangeness and height, an imaginativeness and
+remoteness which features and gesture often showed in despite of his
+intention. He was not like everybody. It would have been interesting to
+take him in hand. It had certainly been irritating to make no impression
+upon him. And now he was married and living in a delicious Arab nest
+with that foolish Charmian Mansfield. So Mrs. Shiffney called Charmian
+at that moment. Suddenly she felt rather melancholy and rather cross.
+She wanted to give somebody a slap. She put down her tea-cup, lit a
+cigarette, and drew her chair to the rail of the balcony.</p>
+
+<p>Claude Heath was sipping his coffee. One long-fingered musical hand lay
+on his knee. His soft hat was tilted a little forward over the eyes that
+were watching the crowd. Probably he was thinking about his opera.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney was incapable of Henriette's hard and bitter
+determination. Her love was not fastened irrevocably on any man. She
+wished that it was, or thought she did. Such a passion must give a new
+interest to life. Often she fancied she was in love; but the feeling
+passed, and she bemoaned its passing. Henriette was determined to keep a
+clear field for her composer. She was ready to be suspicious, to be
+jealous of every musical shadow. Mrs. Shiffney found herself wishing
+that she had Henriette's incentive as she looked at Claude Heath. She
+could not see his face quite clearly. Perhaps when she did&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>That he should have married that silly Charmian Mansfield! Ever since
+then Mrs. Shiffney had resolved to wipe them both off her
+slate&mdash;gradually. Charmian had been right in her supposition. But now
+Mrs. Shiffney thought she was perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> on the edge of something that
+might be more amusing than a mere wiping off the slate.</p>
+
+<p>Of course Claude Heath and Gillier would be at dinner. It would be
+rather fun to see Claude's face when she walked in with Henriette and
+Max Elliot.</p>
+
+<p>She got up and stood by the rail; and now she looked down on Claude with
+intention, willing that he should look up at her. Why should not she
+have the fun of seeing his surprise while she was alone? Why should she
+share with Henriette?</p>
+
+<p>Without turning his eyes in her direction Claude rapped on his table
+with a piece of money, paid a waiter for his coffee, got up, made his
+way out of the caf&eacute;, and mingled with the crowd. He did not come toward
+the hotel, but turned up the street leading to the Governor's palace and
+disappeared. Mrs. Shiffney noticed an Arab in a blue jacket and a white
+burnous, who joined him as he left the caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Local color, I suppose," she murmured to herself. She wished she could
+go off like that in the strange and violent crowd, could be quite
+independent.</p>
+
+<p>"What a curse it is to be a woman!" she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then she resolved after dinner to go out for a stroll with Claude.
+Henriette should not come. If she, Adelaide Shiffney, were going to work
+for Henriette she must be left to work in her own way. She thought of
+the little intrigue that was on foot, and smiled. Then she looked out
+beyond the Place, over the dusty public gardens and the houses, to the
+far-off, serene, bare mountains. For a moment their calm outlines held
+her eyes. For a moment the clamor of voices from below seemed to die out
+of her ears. Then she shivered, drew back into her room, and felt for
+the knob of the electric light. Darkness was falling, and it was growing
+cold on this rocky height which frowned above the gorge of the Rummel.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Claude Heath nor Gillier appeared at dinner. Their absence was
+discussed by Mrs. Shiffney and her friends, and Mrs. Shiffney told them
+that she had seen Claude Heath that evening in a caf&eacute;. After dinner
+Henriette Sennier remarked discontentedly:</p>
+
+<p>"What are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Max, why don't you get a guide and take Henriette out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> to see some
+dancing? There is dancing only five minutes from here," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you&mdash;aren't you coming?"</p>
+
+<p>She had exchanged a glance with Henriette.</p>
+
+<p>"I must write some letters. If I'm not too long over them perhaps I'll
+follow you. I can't miss you. All the dancing is in the same street."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think there are any dancing women here."</p>
+
+<p>"The Kabyle boys dance. Go to see them, and I'll probably follow you."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they were gone Mrs. Shiffney put on a fur coat, summoned an
+Arab called Amor, who had already spoken to her at the door of the
+hotel, and said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"You know the tall Englishman who is staying here?"</p>
+
+<p>"The one who takes Aloui as guide?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. I don't know. But he is fond of music; he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is Aloui's Englishman," interrupted Amor, calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he go at night? He's a friend of mine. I should like to meet
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"He might be with Said Hitani."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"If madame does not mind a little walk&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Take me there. Is it far?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is on the edge of the town, close to the wall. When Said Hitani
+plays he likes to go there. He is growing old. He does not want to play
+where everybody can hear. Madame has a family in England?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney satisfied Amor's curiosity as they walked through the
+crowded streets till they came to the outskirts of the city. The stars
+were out, but there was no moon. The road ran by the city wall. Far down
+below, in the arms of the darkness, lay the gorge, from which rose
+faintly the sound of water; lay the immense stretches of yellow-brown
+and red-brown country darkened here and there with splashes of green;
+the dim plantations, the cascades which fall to the valley of Sidi
+Imcin; the long roads, like flung-out ribands, winding into the great
+distances which suggest eternal things. From the darkness, as from the
+mouth of a mighty cavern, rose a wind, not strong, very pure, very keen,
+which seemed dashed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> with the spray of water. Now and then an Arab
+passed muffled in burnous and hood, a fold of linen held to his mouth.
+The noise of the city was hushed.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Amor stood still.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voil&agrave;</i> Said Hitani!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney heard in the distance a sound of music. Several
+instruments combined to make it, but the voice of a flute was dominant
+among them. Light, sweet, delicate, it came to her in the night like a
+personality full of odd magic, full of small and subtle surprises,
+intricate, gay, and sad.</p>
+
+<p>"Said Hitani!" she said. "He's delicious! Take me to him, Amor."</p>
+
+<p>She knew at once that he was the flute-player.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on, and soon came to a patch of light on the empty road.
+This was shed by the lamps of the caf&eacute; from which the music issued.
+Under the two windows, which were protected by wire and by iron bars,
+five Arabs were squatting, immersed in a sea of garments in which their
+figures and even their features were lost. Only their black eyes looked
+out, gazing steadily into the darkness. A big man, with bare legs and a
+spotted turban, came to the door of the caf&eacute; to invite them to go in;
+but Mrs. Shiffney refused by a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"In a minute!" she said to Amor.</p>
+
+<p>Amor spoke in Arabic to the attendant, who at once returned to the
+coffee niche. Within the music never ceased, and now singing voices
+alternated with the instruments. Mrs. Shiffney kept away from the door
+and looked into the room through the window space next to it.</p>
+
+<p>She saw a long and rather narrow chamber, with a paved floor, strewn
+with clean straw mats, blue-green walls, and an orange-colored ceiling.
+Close to the door was the coffee niche. At the opposite end of the room
+five musicians were squatting, four in a semicircle facing the coffee
+niche, the fifth alone, almost facing them. This fifth was Said Hitani,
+the famous flute-player of Constantine&mdash;a man at this time sixty-three
+years old. In front of him was a flat board, on which lay two freshly
+rolled cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his
+flute from his lips, replaced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a
+moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a
+virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his
+companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its
+end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large
+guitar; the third a derbouka; and the fourth a tarah, or native
+tambourine, ornamented with ten little discs of brass, which made a soft
+clashing sound when shaken. On the left of the room, down one side,
+squatted a row of Arabs with coffee-cups and cigarettes. By the door two
+more were playing a game of draughts. And opposite to the windows, on an
+Oriental rug, the long figure of Claude Heath was stretched out. He lay
+with his hat tilted to the left over one temple, his cheek on his left
+hand, listening intently to the music. On a wooden board beside him was
+some music paper, and now and then with a stylograph he jotted down some
+notes. He looked both emotional and thoughtful. Often his imaginative
+eyes rested on the small and hunched-up figure of Said Hitani, dressed
+in white, black, and gold, with a hood drawn over the head. Now and then
+he looked toward the window, and it seemed to Mrs. Shiffney then that
+his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing, except perhaps some Eastern
+vision summoned up by his lit imagination.</p>
+
+<p>The music very gradually quickened and grew louder, became steadily more
+masculine, powerful, and fierce, till it sounded violent. The volume of
+tone produced by the players astonished Mrs. Shiffney. The wild vagaries
+of the flute seemed presently to be taking place in her brain. She drew
+close to the window, put her hands on the bars. At her feet the
+crouching Arabs never stirred. Behind her the cold wind came up from the
+gorge and the great open country with the sound of the rushing water.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment she had the thing that she believed she lived for&mdash;a
+really keen sensation.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, when the music had become almost intolerably exciting, when
+the players seemed possessed, and noise and swiftness to rush together
+like foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried
+out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the
+derbouka the brown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> fingers of the player pattered with abrupt
+feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and
+fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height,
+and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the musicians
+began to smoke.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="HER_FEET" id="HER_FEET"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img03.jpg"
+             alt="AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS" /><br />
+         <b>"AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS<br />NEVER STIRRED"&mdash;<a href='#Page_258'><i>Page 258</i></a></b>
+    </div>
+
+<p>"Now I'll go in!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Amor.</p>
+
+<p>He led the way and she followed. Claude glanced up, stared for a moment,
+then sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice was almost stern.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney!" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to hear your music, for I know they are all playing only for you
+and the opera."</p>
+
+<p>Her strong, almost masculine hand lingered in his, and how could he let
+it go without impoliteness?</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"It's wonderful the way they play. Said Hitani is an artist."</p>
+
+<p>"You know his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I must know him. May I stay a little?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>He looked round for a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"No, the rug!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>And, despite her bulk, she sank down with a swift ease that was almost
+Oriental.</p>
+
+<p>"Now please introduce me to Said Hitani!"</p>
+
+<p>Till late in the night she stayed between the blue-green walls,
+listening to the vehement voices and to the instruments, following all
+the strange journeys of Said Hitani's flute. She was genuinely
+fascinated, and this fact made her fascinating. As she had caught at Max
+Elliot that day when he asked her, against his intention, to meet Claude
+Heath, so now she caught at Claude Heath himself. She had come to the
+caf&eacute; with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never
+before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position
+in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful
+naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her
+humor took him captive for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> moment. She explained that she had left
+her companions and stolen away to enjoy Constantine alone.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I'm interrupting you. But you must forgive me just for this one
+night!"</p>
+
+<p>Through Amor, who acted as interpreter, she carried on a lively
+intercourse with Said Hitani. The other musicians smiled, but seldom
+spoke, and only among themselves. But Said Hitani, the great artist of
+his native city, a man famous far and wide among the Arabs, was
+infinitely diverting and descriptive in talk even as when he gave
+himself to the flute. With an animation that was youthful he described
+the meaning of each new song. He had two flutes on which he played
+alternately&mdash;"Mousou et Madame," he called them. And he knew, so he
+declared, over a hundred songs. Mrs. Shiffney, speaking to him always
+through Amor, told him of London, and what a sensation he and his
+companions would make there in the <i>d&eacute;cor</i> of a Moorish caf&eacute;. Said
+Hitani pulled his little gray beard with his delicate hands, swayed to
+and fro, and smiled. Then sharply he uttered a torrent of words which
+seemed almost to fight their way out of some chamber in his narrow
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Said Hitani says you have only to send money and the address and they
+are all coming whenever you like. They are very pleased to come."</p>
+
+<p>At this point one of the musicians, a fair man with pale eyes who played
+the tarah, interposed a remark which was uttered with great seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Can they go to London on camels, he wishes to know," observed Amor
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>Said Hitani waited for Mrs. Shiffney's answer with a slightly judicial
+air, moving his head as if in approval of the tarah-player's
+forethought.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid they can't."</p>
+
+<p>The tarah-player spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"He says, can they go on donkeys?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is further than Paris, tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they must go on the sea. Paris is across the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they will have to take a steamer."</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture it was found that the tarah-player would not be of the
+party.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He says he would be very sick, and no man can play when he is sick."</p>
+
+<p>"What will Madame pay?" interposed Said Hitani.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney declared seriously that she would think it over, make a
+calculation, and Amor should convey her decision as to price to him on
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>All seemed well satisfied with this. And the tarah-player remarked,
+after a slight pause, that he would wait to know about the price before
+he decided whether he would be too sick to play in London. Then, at a
+signal from Said Hitani, they all took up their instruments and played
+and sang a garden song called <i>Mabouf</i>, describing how a Sheik and his
+best loved wife walked in a great garden and sang one against the other.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been quite delicious!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude, when at
+last the song <i>Au Revoir</i>, tumultuously brilliant with a tremendous
+crescendo at the close, had been played, and with many salaams and good
+wishes the musicians had departed.</p>
+
+<p>"I love their playing," Claude answered. "But really you shouldn't have
+paid them. I have arranged with Hitani to come every evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I paid them for wanting to know whether they could go to London
+on camels. What a success your opera ought to be if you have got a fine
+libretto."</p>
+
+<p>They were just leaving the caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Do let us stand by the wall for a minute," she added. "By that tree. It
+is so wonderful here."</p>
+
+<p>Claude's guide, Aloui, had come to accompany him home, and was behind
+with Amor. They stayed in the doorway of the caf&eacute;. Mrs. Shiffney and
+Claude leaned on the wall, looking down into the vast void from which
+rose the cool wind and the sound of water.</p>
+
+<p>"What would I give to be a creative artist!" she said. "That must add so
+much meaning to all this. Do you know how fortunate you are? Do you know
+you possess the earth?"</p>
+
+<p>The sable sleeve of her coat touched Claude's arm and hand. Her deep
+voice sounded warm and full of genuine feeling. A short time ago, when
+she had come into the caf&eacute;, he had been both astonished and vexed to see
+her. Now he knew that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> had enjoyed this evening more than any other
+evening that he had spent in Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>"But there are plenty of drawbacks," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, not real ones! After this evening&mdash;well, I shall wish for your
+success. Till now I didn't care in the least. Indeed, I believe I hoped
+you never would have a great success."</p>
+
+<p>She moved slightly nearer to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You've always been so horrid to me, when I always wanted to be
+nice to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us talk about it. What does it matter now? I thought I might
+have done something for you once, have helped you on a little, perhaps.
+But now you are married and settled and will make your own way. I feel
+it. You don't want anyone's help. You've come away from us all, and how
+right you've been. And Charmian's done the right thing, too, giving up
+all our nonsense for your work. Sacrifice means success. You are bound
+to have it. I feel you are going to. Ah, you don't know how I sometimes
+long to be linked, really linked, to the striving, the abnegation, the
+patience, the triumph of a man of genius! People envy my silly little
+position, as they call it. And what is it worth? And yet I do know, I
+have an instinct, a flair, for the real thing. I'm ignorant. I can dare
+to acknowledge it to you. But I can tell what is good and bad, and
+sometimes even why a thing is good. I'm led away, of course. In a silly
+social life like mine everybody is led away. We can't help it. But I
+could have been worth something in the art life of a big man, if I'd
+loved him."</p>
+
+<p>How soft sable is against a hand!</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you could," Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>"And as it is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped speaking abruptly. Then with a marked change of voice she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do forgive me for committing the unpardonable sin&mdash;babbling about
+myself! You're the only person I have ever&mdash;Forget all about it, won't
+you? I don't know why I did it. It was the music, I suppose, and the
+strangeness of this place,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> and thinking of your work and your hopes for
+the future. It made me wish I had some too, either for myself or
+for&mdash;for someone like you."</p>
+
+<p>As if irresistibly governed by feeling her voice had again changed,
+become once more warm as with emotion. But now she drew herself up a
+little and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid! It's over! But you have had a glimpse no one else has
+ever had, and I know you'll keep it to yourself. Let's talk of something
+else&mdash;anything. Tell me something about your libretto, if you care to."</p>
+
+<p>As they walked slowly toward the heart of the city, followed by the two
+Arabs, she took Claude's arm, very naturally, as if half for protection,
+half because it was dark and false steps were possible.</p>
+
+<p>And he told her a good deal, finally a great deal, about the libretto.</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds wonderful!" she said. "I'm so glad! But may I give you a
+little bit of advice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say anything about it to Henriette&mdash;Madame Sennier."</p>
+
+<p>"No. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? I scarcely know. My instinct! Don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd give anything to read it. But if I were you I wouldn't let anyone
+read it. As you probably know, I'm in half the secrets of the artistic
+world, and always have been. But there isn't one woman in a hundred who
+can be trusted to hold her tongue. Is this the hotel? Good-night. Yes,
+isn't it a delicious coat? <i>Bonne nuit</i>, Amor! <i>&Agrave; demain!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>A minute later Mrs. Shiffney tapped at Henriette's door, which was
+immediately opened.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all right," she whispered. "I shall have the libretto
+to-morrow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later Mrs. Shiffney slipped Gillier's libretto surreptitiously
+into Claude's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It's splendid!" she almost whispered. "With such a libretto you can't
+fail."</p>
+
+<p>They were in the deserted salon of the hotel, among armchairs, albums
+and old French picture-papers. Mrs. Shiffney looked toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let anyone know I've read it&mdash;especially Henriette. She's a dear
+and a great friend of mine, but, all the same, she'd be horribly
+jealous. There's only one thing about the libretto that frightens me."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Do tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Having so many Easterns in it. If by any chance you should ever want to
+produce your opera&mdash;" She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon him. "In
+America, I fancy&mdash;no, I think I'm being absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"But what do you mean? Do tell me! Not that there's the slightest chance
+yet of my opera ever being done anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's only that Americans do so hate what they call color."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that is only in negroes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? Then I'm talking nonsense! I'm so glad! Not a word to Henriette!
+Hush! Here she is!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the door opened and the white face of Madame Sennier
+looked in.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you two doing here? Where is Max?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone to arrange about the sleeping-car."</p>
+
+<p>Claude slipped the libretto into the pocket of his jacket. In London he
+had been rather inclined to like Madame Sennier. In Constantine he felt
+ill at ease with her. He detected the secret hostility which she
+scarcely troubled to conceal, though she covered it with an air of
+careless indifference. Now and then a corner of the covering slipped
+down, leaving a surface<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day
+at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling
+which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude
+had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit. She had rescued him from his solitude
+with Gillier&mdash;a solitude which he had endured for the sake of the opera,
+but which had been odious to him. She had warmed him by her apparent
+enthusiasm, by her sympathy. He had been obliged to acknowledge that she
+was very forgiving. He had certainly not been "nice" to her in London.
+Her simplicity in telling him she had felt his conduct, her sweetness in
+being so ready to forget it, to enter into his expectations, to wish him
+well, had fascinated him, roused his chivalry. But most of all had her
+few words by the wall after Said Hitani's music touched him, been
+instrumental in bringing him nearer to her.</p>
+
+<p>"She showed me a bit of her real self," he thought. "And she was not
+sorry afterward that she had shown it to me."</p>
+
+<p>He had made her a return for this, the return which she had wanted; but
+to Claude it seemed no return at all.</p>
+
+<p>"You are really going away to-night?" he said now. And there was a note
+of regret in his voice which was not missed by her.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't possibly leave Jacques alone any longer," said Madame Sennier.
+"And what have we to do here? We aren't getting local color for an
+opera."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; of course, you want to get away!" said Claude quickly, and
+stiffening with constraint.</p>
+
+<p>"I should love to stay on. This place fascinates me by its strangeness,
+its marvellous position," said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"But I suppose we must go back. Will you take me for a last walk before
+tea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier passed the tip of her tongue across her scarlet lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Over the bridge and up into the pine-wood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wherever you like."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Armand Gillier walked brusquely into the room. Mrs.
+Shiffney turned to Henriette.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We'll leave Monsieur Gillier to take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>Henriette's lips tightened. Gillier said:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bien</i>, madame!"</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Shiffney and Claude left the room Gillier bowed with very formal
+politeness. The door shut. After a pause Gillier said:</p>
+
+<p>"You go away to-night, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier sat down on a settee by a round table on which lay
+several copies of <i>L'Illustration</i>, in glazed black covers, <i>La D&eacute;p&ecirc;che
+Alg&eacute;rienne</i>, and a guide to Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>She had been awake most of the previous night, with jealous care
+studying the libretto Gillier had sold to Claude, which had been put
+into her hands by Mrs. Shiffney. At once she had recognized its unusual
+merit. She had in a high degree the faculty, possessed by many clever
+Frenchwomen, of detecting and appraising the value of a work of art. She
+was furious because Gillier's libretto had never been submitted to her
+husband; but she could not say all that was in her mind. She and
+Adelaide Shiffney had been frank with each other in the matter, and she
+had no intention of making any mistake because she was angry.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't much time to spare. Jacques has to get on with his new
+opera."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier sat down on a chair with a certain cold and reluctant but
+definite politeness. His look and manner said: "I cannot, of course,
+leave this lady whom I hate."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a great man now. I congratulate you on his success."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques was always a great man, but he didn't quite understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"You enlightened him, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"That was very clever of you."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't stupid. But I don't happen to be a stupid woman." Her yellow
+eyes narrowed.</p>
+
+<p>"I know how to detect quality. And I suppose you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"You tried to sell libretti to my husband before he was famous."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And failed."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But now I'm glad to know you have succeeded with another man who
+is not famous yet."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier laid his right hand down on one of the glazed black covers of
+<i>L'Illustration</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not believe in my talent, madame. I cannot understand why you
+should be interested in such a matter."</p>
+
+<p>"You make the mistake of supposing that a talented man can never be
+immature. What you offered to my husband was immature; but I always knew
+you had talent."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed? You never told me so that I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"You appeared to be fully aware of it."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier made a fist of his hand on the cover. He wished Jacques Sennier
+were setting the libretto he had sold to Claude Heath, and Madame
+Sennier wished exactly the same thing. He did not know her thought; but
+she divined his. With all her soul, greedy for her Jacques and for
+herself, she coveted that libretto. She almost hated Claude Heath for
+possessing it. And now, as she sat opposite to Gillier, with the round
+table between them, always alert for intrigue, she began to wonder
+whether in truth the libretto was irrevocably lost to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't you?" she said, fixing her unflinching eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew I was not quite such a fool as your husband certainly thought
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques is a mere baby outside of his art."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Si?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"That is why I have to think for him very often. Which of the libretti
+has Mr. Heath bought?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not one of those I had the honor of showing to Monsieur Sennier."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? You have written another specially for Mr. Heath?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote another to please myself. His wife saw it and took it to him.
+He was so foolish as to think it good enough to buy."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope his music will be good enough to produce on the stage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gillier looked very sharply at her, and began to tug at his moustache;
+but he said nothing. After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change
+of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more
+friendly:</p>
+
+<p>"When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with
+a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough
+character. "It has nothing to do with you. I haven't your interests at
+my heart. Why should I bother about them? All I want is to get something
+fine for my husband when a chance arises. I know what's good better than
+you do, my friend. You showed me three libretti that didn't do. Show me
+one that does do, and I'll pay you a price that will astonish you."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier's large eyes shone.</p>
+
+<p>"How much would you pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Show me a fine libretto!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me how much you'd pay."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to
+prove the offer to my satisfaction."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the <i>D&eacute;p&ecirc;che Alg&eacute;rienne</i>,
+and began carefully to fold it into pleats.</p>
+
+<p>"I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were satisfied I would see that you got it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence, during which they looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>Gillier was puzzled. He did not believe Claude Heath had shown the
+libretto to her. Yet she was surely prompted now by some very definite
+purpose. He could not guess what it was. At last he looked down at the
+paper he was folding mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't got anything to sell at present," he almost growled, in a
+very low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pity. We must hope for the future. There is no reason why you
+and I should be mortal enemies since you haven't had a chance to murder
+my poor old cabbage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's a coward," said Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he is. And I'm very thankful for it. Cowards live long."</p>
+
+<p>She got up from the settee. Gillier, returning to his varnish, sprang
+up, dropping the paper, and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget what I said," she remarked as she went out. "Five times
+the price anyone else offers, on account of a royalty to be fixed by
+mutual agreement. But it would have to be a libretto <i>num&eacute;ro un</i>."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her but did not say a word.</p>
+
+<p>When she was gone he sat down again by the round table and stared at the
+cloth, with his head bent and his muscular, large-boned arms laid one
+upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>And presently he swore under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney and Claude were making their way through the
+crowded and noisy street toward the unfinished Suspension Bridge which
+spans the gorge, linking the city to the height which is crowned by the
+great hospital. Beyond the hospital, opposite to the Grand Rocher, a
+terrific precipice of rock beneath which a cascade leaps down to the
+valley where lie the baths of Sidi Imcin, is a wood of fir-trees
+commanding an immense view. This was the objective of their walk. The
+sun shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage
+height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for
+destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were
+carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like
+the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men
+among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that
+stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and
+slippery pavements that wind between the mauve and the pale yellow house
+fronts, came incessant cries and the long and dull murmur of voices.
+Bellebelles were singing everywhere in their tiny cages, heedless of
+their captivity. On tiny wooden tables and stands before the insouciant
+workers at trades, and the indifferent sellers of goods, were set vases
+of pale yellow jonquils. Round the minarets fluttered the pigeons. And
+again, floating across the terrific gorge, came the brave notes of the
+military clarions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is something here which I have never felt in any other place,"
+said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to
+cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the
+water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city,
+is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known
+you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting
+life is!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not always think so, but at this moment she really found life
+interesting.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never forget this little time!" she added. "I haven't enjoyed
+myself so much for years. And now it's nearly over. What a bore!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude felt exhilarated too. The day was so bright, so alive, seemed
+full of wildness and gaiety and lusty freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us enjoy what is left!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She stole a side glance at him as he swung along by her. How would it be
+to be married to a man like him&mdash;a man with his way to make?</p>
+
+<p>They came down to the bridge, escaping from the bustle of the city. From
+the fir woods the clarions sounded louder, calling to each other like
+bold and triumphant voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got those in your opera?" she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have them."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>They talked a little about the libretto as they crossed the bridge, with
+the sound of the water in their ears.</p>
+
+<p>"It is good to be out of the city!" Claude said, as they came to the
+rubble of the unfinished track on the farther side, where Arabs worked
+under the supervision of a French overseer. "I did not know you were a
+walker."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you knew very much about me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's quite true. Where do you wish to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere&mdash;to the left. Let us sit on a rock under the trees and look at
+the view."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you get up here?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you give me your hand."</p>
+
+<p>They walked a little way in the shadow of the fir-trees,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> leaving the
+hospital on their right. The plantation was almost deserted. The
+soldiers were evidently retiring, for the clarions sounded more distant
+now. Here and there the figure of an Arab was visible sauntering slowly
+among the trees, with the smoke of his cigarette dispersing above him.
+Some young Jews went by, holding hands, laughing and talking. They sent
+glances of hard inquiry at Mrs. Shiffney's broad figure from their too
+intelligent eyes. Soon their thin forms vanished among the gray trunks.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit there?" asked Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; just in the sun."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you wanted&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, let us sit in the sun."</p>
+
+<p>She opened her green parasol.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the edge of the cliff, which descended steeply to the high
+road to Philippeville, was a flat ledge of rock warmed by the sunbeams.</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"</p>
+
+<p>They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale
+yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot,
+the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude,
+clasping his hands round his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London
+husbands&mdash;" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
+suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I did."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you ever regret that little house?"</p>
+
+<p>She saw his eyebrows move downward.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I&mdash;I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."</p>
+
+<p>"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
+seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
+that without ever hearing your music? I did."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
+evasiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
+view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
+too well, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
+But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
+particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
+unlike anyone else's."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly got to love my little house."</p>
+
+<p>"Because it was doing things for you."</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
+As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent&mdash;as if in
+answer to his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;forgive me&mdash;how can you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
+directions. That's why a lot of people&mdash;silly people, you think, I
+daresay&mdash;follow my lead."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'd better not."</p>
+
+<p>"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
+of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
+hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.</p>
+
+<p>"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
+blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.</p>
+
+<p>Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.</p>
+
+<p>"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> Charmian had
+come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.</p>
+
+<p>He did not mean to speak coldly; but directly he had said the words he
+knew that his voice had become frigid.</p>
+
+<p>"What a stupid ass I am!" was his comment on himself. But how to be
+different?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney was looking very grave. Her drawn-down brows, her powerful
+lips suggested to him at this moment suffering. In London he had thought
+of her as a typical pleasure-seeking woman, greedy of sensation,
+reckless in the chase after it. And he had disliked, almost feared her,
+despite her careless charm. Now he felt differently about her. He had
+come to that point in a man's acquaintance with a woman when he says to
+himself, "I never understood her properly." He seemed to himself a
+brute. Yet what had he done?</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a
+silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to
+say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even
+to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out
+beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the
+cascades, he saw in a hollow, the clustering trees about the baths of
+Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white
+blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against
+the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoarse noise in the
+hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped
+down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where
+it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence,
+believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined,
+and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops,
+beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open
+country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming
+in the strong colors&mdash;reds, yellows, golds&mdash;with long rolling slopes,
+dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for
+hundreds of kilometers, far-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests
+seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or
+perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must
+exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only
+that something experienced made life truly life.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his
+companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for
+women rather than a woman.</p>
+
+<p>During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires
+connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had
+come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her
+mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette&mdash;was, perhaps, at
+this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different
+she might well have been on his side. Even now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she
+deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it
+matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as
+marriage got to do with it?</p>
+
+<p>Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that
+firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive
+loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.</p>
+
+<p>He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the
+minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of
+it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.
+All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he
+understood her desire and was recoiling from it.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed
+every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face,
+transforming it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think
+you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her
+tailor-made skirt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to
+seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was
+unknown by her at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."</p>
+
+<p>She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward
+the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."</p>
+
+<p>Claude said nothing, and she continued:</p>
+
+<p>"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his
+knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his
+talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as
+inflexible as the Grand Rocher."</p>
+
+<p>She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>"That is why women always love and hate him."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and
+looked at him, smiling:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure Charmian knows that."</p>
+
+<p>Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.</p>
+
+<p>"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And, so, very few inflexible men?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He pulled himself up.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" she said encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have
+never laid claim to anything&mdash;anything in the way of talent. It isn't
+quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or
+an important person when I don't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of
+talent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am entirely unknown."</p>
+
+<p>"What has that to do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, of course, but&mdash;but perhaps it is only when he has something
+to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its
+production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be
+specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I
+have been privileged. I have read the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian,
+of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by
+events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which
+always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered
+the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had
+guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it
+angel or demon in his life?</p>
+
+<p>"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."</p>
+
+<p>He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities,
+into the perpetual uproar of the city.</p>
+
+<p>By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.
+Claude went down to the station to see them off.</p>
+
+<p>On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>From the window of the <i>wagon-lit</i> Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men
+standing together as the train drew away from the platform.</p>
+
+<p>Then she nodded and waved her hand.</p>
+
+<p>There was a mocking smile on her face.</p>
+
+<p>When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to
+suspect it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.
+"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the
+window."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, don't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying
+Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"</p>
+
+<p>The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only
+stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and
+went on board <i>The Wanderer</i>, which weighed anchor and set sail for
+Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say
+adieu to Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney
+and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These,
+the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the
+faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved
+complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days
+of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost
+vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and
+done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made
+upon the occupants and had received from them.</p>
+
+<p>"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die
+for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were
+his own child!"</p>
+
+<p>"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The visit was not without intensities.</p>
+
+<p>"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into
+the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just
+back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the
+way, we came across your husband in Constantine."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening
+phrase, "all news when we meet." She was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> burning with curiosity, was
+tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw
+the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the
+two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
+Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
+there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
+with our affairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
+delightful time."</p>
+
+<p>"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
+the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"&mdash;he
+flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
+evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"</p>
+
+<p>He blew a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I forget them? Never!"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
+spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The composer seized his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
+the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
+come!"</p>
+
+<p>He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
+like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
+him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
+women were left alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
+There's a little breeze from the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
+murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
+if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
+Constantine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
+extraordinary."</p>
+
+<p>And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
+Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
+before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
+death by their Arab husbands.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>C'est affreux!</i>" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
+hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
+twisting fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Les Arabes sont des monstres.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
+interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.</p>
+
+<p>She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its
+African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
+read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
+instinctive disgust.</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
+eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
+parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
+antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
+really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
+they are picturesque."</p>
+
+<p>"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
+call color drives them quite mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all the same. <i>Ils sont tous des monstres affreux.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Tst! Tst! Tst!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tst! Tst!"</p>
+
+<p>They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
+and of native music.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go! I must hear, see!"</p>
+
+<p>The composer cried out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
+from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.</p>
+
+<p>"How hot it is!"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
+syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.</p>
+
+<p>"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
+the syrups. "I wonder&mdash;" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
+my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
+kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
+ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
+declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
+a negative.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
+and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
+husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
+said Charmian, in a constrained voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>Was she smiling behind the veil?</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what
+real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London,
+they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to
+take us there, no reason to go."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and added:</p>
+
+<p>"And Claude and I are not millionaires."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of
+living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"But some day you will surely go."</p>
+
+<p>"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house
+one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and
+pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find
+some occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I believe I do&mdash;a man with a tiny beard."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the
+world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so,
+Henriette?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find
+one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals.
+And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I
+told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for
+him. He doesn't know where to look."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely&mdash;" began Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.</p>
+
+<p>Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's
+eyes, through her veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really&mdash;Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When
+art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know
+your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees
+that&mdash;well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the
+Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the
+fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and
+playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.
+<i>Mais, ma ch&egrave;re, ce n'est pas s&eacute;rieux!</i> One has only to look at your
+interesting husband, to see him in the African <i>milieu</i>, to see that.
+And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A
+pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I
+starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is
+not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one
+form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> that is where
+the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders
+went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted
+for the last time! Here are your syrups."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Sennier came, almost running.</p>
+
+<p>"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a
+moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some
+wild joke of the composer's.</p>
+
+<p>"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating
+all your biscuits now."</p>
+
+<p>When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He
+insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande
+Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and
+warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed
+one on the top of the other, in both his own.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed.
+"To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person,
+have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not
+more truthful than I."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But
+to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water
+bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your
+respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian
+grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"He accepted a libretto!"</p>
+
+<p>When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of
+profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed
+to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed
+for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the
+woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy
+and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense
+vitality went away with them all. So long as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> were with her the
+little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of
+things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled
+Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in
+both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and
+temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And
+they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the
+great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone&mdash;who counted&mdash;knew
+who they were.</p>
+
+<p>As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the
+associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions
+were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only
+knew it now that he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier had frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mais, ma ch&egrave;re, ce n'est pas s&eacute;rieux!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as
+if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth
+known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One
+has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the African
+<i>milieu</i>, to see that!"</p>
+
+<p>What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?</p>
+
+<p>Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole
+matter, that she telegraphed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull
+here.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Charmian</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her r&ocirc;le;
+but her nerves drove her into the weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men
+together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On
+the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He
+seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>ber what a keen
+interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she
+thought. Then he said formally:</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted to stay, madame."</p>
+
+<p>During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to
+become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in
+hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could
+not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was
+talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.</p>
+
+<p>The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually
+unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his
+voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.
+Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her
+with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and
+Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.
+Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his
+Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana
+cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.
+His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably
+expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his
+remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay
+that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful
+carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my
+husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him
+with his music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and
+looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows, madame?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to
+have certain doubts."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I
+don't quite understand."</p>
+
+<p>"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much
+knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an
+original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally!"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the
+public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I
+will never get on together."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel
+anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of
+it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally,
+but I am not <i>homme du monde</i>. I am not a little man of the salons. I am
+not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
+I have been, and I still am, poor&mdash;poor, madame! But, madame, I do not
+intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not&mdash;with your talent!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is just it!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
+speaking almost with violence.</p>
+
+<p>"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
+that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
+it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
+will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
+go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"&mdash;he paused, finished his glass of
+brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> were making a great
+effort after self-control&mdash;"but is your husband's talent for the stage
+as great as mine? I doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
+to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
+not a note of it."</p>
+
+<p>"No. And that enables me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
+Gillier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
+thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feared by your words, your manner&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you&mdash;besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
+what you were saying."</p>
+
+<p>"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
+husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense&mdash;personal
+offense&mdash;pronouncing any sort of judgment&mdash;to approach you&mdash;" He paused.
+The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
+in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not&mdash;I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
+success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
+Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have&mdash;very reluctantly, madame,
+believe me!&mdash;come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
+associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
+different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
+has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
+lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
+understand something of the life not merely in, but that
+underlies&mdash;<i>underlies</i>&mdash;my libretto. My efforts&mdash;well, what can I
+say?"&mdash;he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the difference between the French and English
+temperaments."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who
+is not afraid to live."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a
+matter which I can discuss with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"&mdash;he looked
+down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I
+am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I
+sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit
+your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose
+a hundred pounds rather than to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to
+speak quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"You have asked me a question&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have asked no question, madame!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the
+libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to
+keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer
+would be the same."</p>
+
+<p>She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger,
+a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense
+bitterness:</p>
+
+<p>"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our
+friends, our occupations, everything&mdash;our life in England"&mdash;her voice
+trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and
+you come, you dare to come to us, and ask&mdash;ask&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to
+keep it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We do choose to keep it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I can do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> say good-night
+for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it
+seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its
+own to resist hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space
+of the court and disappear.</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat
+down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing
+in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that
+she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted
+by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the
+rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will
+be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden
+entrance, and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian retreated to the house.</p>
+
+<p>As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely
+ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude.
+Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her
+quiet, agreeable voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall
+read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I
+daresay you are tired."</p>
+
+<p>She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that
+instant Charmian felt much calmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to
+you for him."</p>
+
+<p>Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly
+away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter,
+Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go upstairs," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it
+natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in
+the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she
+wrote her letters and did accounts.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into
+this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How
+could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"</p>
+
+<p>As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the
+embrasure of the small grated window.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to
+Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you must have shown it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"She has read it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"I am positive she has read it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You&mdash;you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rose as she said the last words.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I
+have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I did!"</p>
+
+<p>"And then&mdash;then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"She had not read my copy."</p>
+
+<p>"I say she has!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."</p>
+
+<p>"To her&mdash;to Madame Sennier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh&mdash;you&mdash;oh, that men should claim to have
+keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before
+her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the
+handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her
+body shook.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her
+handkerchief on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well,
+then!"</p>
+
+<p>She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly
+with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her
+shoulders were slightly raised, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked
+me if we would give up his libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"Give up the libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very
+poor. Do you put the two things together?"</p>
+
+<p>"You think he fancies&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques
+Sennier. Those two&mdash;Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier&mdash;went to
+Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Absurd!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the
+libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in
+what you were doing?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets
+nobody else knew? And didn't she&mdash;didn't she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to
+say&mdash;"make love to you."</p>
+
+<p>"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are
+trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up
+everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house,
+everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now?
+Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who
+comes along&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a
+storm of jealousy swept through her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not true or fair&mdash;what you imply!" said Claude. "I never&mdash;Mrs.
+Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me&mdash;nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to
+Madame Sennier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did Gillier ever say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he
+should&mdash;to a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his
+will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe
+that he had been tricked.</p>
+
+<p>"We have no proof," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was
+struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.</p>
+
+<p>"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> to go by
+Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to get away. But he held her.</p>
+
+<p>"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great
+fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's
+no great harm done. The libretto is mine&mdash;ours, ours. And we're not
+going to give it up. I'll try&mdash;I'll try to put my heart into the music,
+to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for
+all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp,
+and hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she
+pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still,
+facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its
+further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated
+window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women
+had looked as they sat idly on the divan.</p>
+
+<p>He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And,
+leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a
+long, long time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>More than a year had passed away. April held sway over Algeria.</p>
+
+<p>In the white Arab house on the hill Claude and Charmian still lived and
+Claude still worked. To escape the great heat of the previous summer
+they had gone to England for a time, but early October had found them
+once more at Djenan-el-Maqui, and since then they had not stirred.</p>
+
+<p>Their visit to London had been a strange experience for Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>They had arrived in town at the beginning of July, and had stayed with
+Mrs. Mansfield in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Mansfield had not paid her
+proposed visit to Algiers. She had written that she was growing old and
+lazy, and dreaded a sea voyage. But she had received them with a warmth
+of affection which had earned their immediate forgiveness. There was
+still a month of "season" to run, and Charmian went about and saw her
+old friends. But Claude refused to go out, and returned at once to
+orchestral studies with his "coach." He even remained in London during
+the whole of August and September, while Charmian paid some visits, and
+went to the sea with her mother. Thus they had been separated for a time
+after their long sojourn together in the closest intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian found that she missed Claude very much. One day she said to her
+mother, with pretended lightness and smiling:</p>
+
+<p>"Madre, I've got such a habit of Claude and Claude's work that I seem to
+be in half when I'm not with him."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield wondered whether her son-in-law felt in half when he was
+by himself in London.</p>
+
+<p>To Charmian, coming back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had
+sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the
+first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had
+often longed to have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> party in the evening to look forward to. In
+England she realized that not only had she got a habit of Claude, but
+that she had got a habit, or almost a habit, of Africa and a quiet life
+in the sunshine under blue skies. If the opera were finished, the need
+for living in Mustapha removed, would she be glad not to return to
+Djenan-el-Maqui? The mere thought of never seeing the little white house
+with its cupolas and its flat roof again sent a sharp pang through her.
+Pierre, with his arched eyebrows and upraised, upturned palm, "La Grande
+Jeanne," Bibi, little Fatma, they had become almost a dear part of her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>But soon she fell into old ways of thought and of action, though she was
+never, she believed, quite the same Charmian as before. She longed, as
+of old, but even more strongly, to conquer the set, and this world of
+pleasure-seekers and connoisseurs. But she looked upon them from the
+outside, whereas before she had been inside. During her long absence she
+had certainly "dropped out" a little. She realized the root indifference
+of most people to those who are not perpetually before them, making a
+claim to friendship. When she reappeared in London many whom she had
+hitherto looked upon as friends greeted her with a casual, "Oh, are you
+back after all? We thought you had quite forsaken us!" And it was
+impossible for even Charmian to suppose that such a forsaking would have
+been felt as a great affliction.</p>
+
+<p>This recognition on her part of the small place she had held, even as
+merely a charming girl, in this society, made Charmian think of
+Djenan-el-Maqui with a stronger affection, but also made her long in a
+new, and more ruthless way, to triumph in London, as clever wives of
+great celebrities triumph. She saw Madame Sennier several times, as
+usual surrounded and f&ecirc;ted. And Madame Sennier, though she nodded and
+said a few words, scarcely seemed to remember who Charmian was. Only
+once did Charmian see a peculiarly keen expression in the yellow eyes as
+they looked at her. That was when some mention was made of a project of
+Crayford's, his intention to build a big opera house in London. Madame
+Sennier had shrugged her shoulders. But as she answered, "What would be
+the use? The Metropolitan has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> nearly killed him. Covent Garden, with
+its subscription, would simply finish him off. He has moved Heaven and
+earth to get Jacques' new opera either for America or England, but of
+course we laughed at him. He may pretend as much as he likes, but he's
+got nothing up his sleeve"&mdash;the yellow eyes had fixed themselves upon
+Charmian with an intent look that was almost like a look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>To Sennier she had only spoken twice. The first time he had forgotten
+who she was. The second time he had exclaimed, "Ah, the syrups! the
+greengage! and the moonlight among the passion-flowers!" and had greeted
+her with effusion.</p>
+
+<p>But he had never come to call on her.</p>
+
+<p>She still felt a sort of fondness for him; but she understood that he
+was like a child who needed perpetual petting and did not care very much
+from whom it came.</p>
+
+<p>The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long
+absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how
+much of a nobody she was in it.</p>
+
+<p>She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much
+more to conquer it and to dominate it.</p>
+
+<p>On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the
+heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill,
+when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices
+of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the
+three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed
+by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at
+her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing
+in London.</p>
+
+<p>From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha
+after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost
+as a living thing&mdash;a thing for which she had fought, from which she had
+beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers.
+They had no other child. She did not regret that.</p>
+
+<p>Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The
+paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was
+inclined to believe that by con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>stant effort he had strengthened his
+will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And
+the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him
+without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was
+gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in
+the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with
+Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had
+brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of
+calm even in the conquered.</p>
+
+<p>Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at
+the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By
+degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to
+do.</p>
+
+<p>He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers
+were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked
+things over."</p>
+
+<p>Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by
+Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a note from Saint
+Eugene. Gillier was once more in Algeria. He had never given them a sign
+of life since he had tried to buy back his libretto from them. Now he
+wrote formally, saying he was paying a short visit to his family, and
+asking permission to call at Djenan-el-Maqui at any hour that would suit
+them. His note was addressed to Claude, who at once showed it to
+Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we must let him come," Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned the note over, twisted it in her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"How I hate him!" she said. "I can't help it. His insult to you and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us go into all that again. It is so long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"This letter brings it all back."</p>
+
+<p>She made a grimace of disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you see him?" said Claude. "Let me see him alone. You can
+easily have an engagement. You are going to those theatricals at the
+Hotel Continental on Friday. Let me have him here then."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shall I?" She glanced at Claude. "No, I'd better be here too."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know&mdash;but I'd better! Tell him to come on Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"Lunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Let us just have him in the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier came at the time appointed, and was received by Charmian, who
+made a creditable effort to behave as if she were at her ease and glad
+to see him. She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the
+drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude
+would come in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning of that day she had persuaded Claude to let her have a
+quarter of an hour alone with Gillier. He had asked her why she wanted
+to be alone with a man she disliked. She had replied, "After
+Constantine, don't you think you had better leave the practical part of
+it to me?" Claude had reddened slightly, but he had only said, "Very
+well. But I don't quite see what you mean. We have no reason to suppose
+Gillier has a special purpose in coming."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I should like that quarter of an hour."</p>
+
+<p>So now she and Gillier sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she
+asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff
+formality which had in it something military.</p>
+
+<p>Directly Charmian had looked at Gillier she had realized that he had a
+definite purpose in coming. She was on the defensive, but she tried not
+to show it. Presently she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been working&mdash;writing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Another libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," Gillier said, with a sort of icy fierceness, "I cannot believe
+that you are good enough to be genuinely interested in my unsuccessful
+life."</p>
+
+<p>After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to
+Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto
+destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble,
+and had not spared time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> At last the work had been completed, typed,
+and submitted to Madame Sennier. After a week of anxious waiting Gillier
+had received the libretto with the following note:</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Gillier</span>,&mdash;This might do very well for some unknown
+genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques.
+Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us a
+fine libretto, <i>such as I know you can write</i>, and we will pay you five
+times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We should
+not mind even if <i>someone else</i> had already tried to set it. All we care
+about is to get your <i>best work</i>. <span class="smcap">Henriette Sennier</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Gillier had torn this note up with fury. Then he had thought things over
+and paid Madame Sennier a visit. It was this visit which had prompted
+his return to Djenan-el-Maqui.</p>
+
+<p>"But I hope it won't be unsuccessful much longer," Charmian said, with
+deliberate graciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so too, madame."</p>
+
+<p>Something in his voice, a new tone, almost startled her. But she
+continued, without any change of manner:</p>
+
+<p>"We must all hope for a great success."</p>
+
+<p>"We, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"You and I and my husband."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier bit his moustache and looked down. A heavy gloom seemed to have
+overspread him. After a moment he looked up, leaned back, as if
+determined to be at his ease, and said abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Sennier has completed a new opera. It is to be produced at the
+Metropolitan Opera House in New York some time next winter."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian tried to keep all expression out of her voice as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I last saw you, madame," Gillier continued, "I have managed to
+get a look at the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>Without knowing that she did so Charmian leaned forward quickly and
+moved her hands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It does not approach my work, the work your husband bought from me for
+only one hundred pounds, in strength and drama."</p>
+
+<p>"Your libretto is splendid. Mr. Lake and I have always thought so; and
+of course my husband agrees with us. But you know that."</p>
+
+<p>Gillier pulled his thick moustache, looked quickly round the room, then
+at his hands, which he had abruptly brought down on his knees, and then
+at Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I have reason to believe that Jacques Sennier&mdash;or rather Madame
+Sennier, for she read all the libretti sent in to him, and only showed
+him those she thought worth considering&mdash;that if Madame Sennier had seen
+the libretto I sold to your husband Sennier would have set
+mine&mdash;mine&mdash;in preference to the one he has set."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said Charmian, with studied indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he exclaimed, almost with violence.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is very interesting. But I don't see what it has to do with me
+and my husband. You were good enough to offer to buy back your libretto
+from us last year. We refused. Our refusal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your refusal, madame! I never spoke about the matter to your husband. I
+never asked him."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come here now to ask him? Is that what you mean, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier got up, throwing his cigarette end into the brass coffee tray.
+He was evidently much excited. As he stood up in front of her Charmian
+thought that he looked suddenly more common, coarser. He thrust his
+hands into the pockets of his black trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"I must understand the position," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"It is perfectly clear. Forgive me, monsieur, but I must say I think it
+rather bad taste on your part to return to a subject which has been
+finally disposed of and which is very disagreeable to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I am here to say to you that I cannot consider it as finally
+disposed of till I have discussed it with Monsieur Heath. I came here
+prepared to make a proposition."</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I trust that your husband is not endeavoring to avoid me."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian got up and sharply clapped her hands. The Arab boy, Bibi,
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Bibi, ask monsieur to come," she said to him in French.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bieng, madame</i>," replied Bibi, who turned and walked softly away.</p>
+
+<p>During the two or three minutes which elapsed before Claude came in
+Charmian and Gillier said nothing. Gillier, who, under the influence of
+excitement, was losing his veneer of good manners, moved about the room
+pretending to examine the few bibelots it contained. His face was
+flushed. He still kept his hands in his pockets. Charmian sat still in
+her corner, watching him. She was too angry to speak. And what was there
+to be said now? Although she had a good deal of will she was clever
+enough to realize when its exercise would be useless. She knew that she
+could do nothing more with this man. Otherwise she would not have sent
+for Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>V'l&agrave;, Mousou!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Bibi had returned and gently pointed to his master, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bon jour</i>, Gillier!" said Claude, as the Frenchman swung round
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bon jour!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands. Claude looked from Gillier to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You were smoking?" he said, glancing at the tray. "Won't you have
+another cigarette?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Merci!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, I will."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the cigarette box.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't seen you for a long while." He lit a cigarette. "Aren't you
+going to sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>After a pause Gillier sat down. His eyes were fixed on Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you have come," he said. "Madame does not quite understand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand perfectly, Monsieur Gillier," Charmian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> interrupted. "Pray
+don't endow me with a stupidity which I don't possess."</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer at any rate to explain the reason of my visit to Monsieur
+Heath, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come with a special object then?" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means tell me what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mon Dieu!</i>" said Gillier. "What is the good of a cloud of words
+between two men? I want to buy back the libretto I sold to you more than
+a year ago."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian gazed at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive
+face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought
+it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Because I don't think you and I are suited to work together. I
+don't think we could ever make a satisfactory combination in art. This
+has been my opinion ever since I was with you at Constantine."</p>
+
+<p>"More than a year ago. And you only come here and say so now!"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier was silent and fidgeted on the divan.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you must have some other reason?" said Claude in a very quiet,
+almost unnaturally quiet voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That is one reason, and an excellent one. Another is, however, that if
+you will consent to sell me back my libretto I believe I could get it
+taken up by a man, a composer, who is more in sympathy with me and my
+artistic aims than you could ever be."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. And what about all the months of work I have put in? What about
+all the music I have composed? Are you here to ask me to throw it away,
+or what?"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely your proposition isn't a serious one?" said Claude, still
+speaking with complete self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"But I say it is! I say"&mdash;Gillier raised his voice&mdash;"that it is serious.
+I am a poor man, and I am sick of waiting for success. I sold my
+libretto to you in a hurry, not knowing what I was doing. Now I have a
+chance, a great chance, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> being associated with someone who is already
+famous, who would make the success of my libretto a certainty&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A chance, when your libretto is my property!" interrupted Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know as well as you do that it's a hard thing to ask you to throw
+away all these months of labor! I don't think I could have done it,
+though in this world every man, every artist especially, must think of
+himself, if it wasn't for one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your heart isn't in the work!" said Gillier defiantly, but with a
+curious air of conviction&mdash;the conviction of an acute man who had made a
+discovery which could not be contested or gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not true, Monsieur Gillier!" said Charmian, with hot energy.</p>
+
+<p>Claude said nothing, and Gillier continued, raising his voice:</p>
+
+<p>"It is true. Your talent and mine are not fitted to be joined together,
+and you are artist enough to know it as well as I do. I haven't heard
+your music; but I can tell. I may be poor, I may be unknown&mdash;that
+doesn't matter! I've got the instinct that doesn't lie, can't lie. If I
+had known you as I do now, before I had sold my libretto, you never
+should have had it, even if you had offered me five hundred pounds
+instead of a hundred, and nobody else would have looked at it. With your
+temperament, with your way of thinking, you'll never make a success of
+it&mdash;never! I tell you that&mdash;I who am speaking to you!"</p>
+
+<p>The veins in his temples swelled, and he frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me back my libretto and take back your money! Let me have my
+chance of success. Madame&mdash;she is hard! She cares nothing! But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, I must ask you to leave my wife's name out," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>And for the first time since he had come into the room he spoke with
+stern determination.</p>
+
+<p>He had become very pale, and now looked strangely moved.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have her name brought in," he added. "This is my affair."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Very well! Will you let me buy back my libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian expected an instant stern refusal from her husband. But after
+Gillier's question there was a prolonged pause. She wanted to break it,
+to answer fiercely for Claude; but she did not dare to. For a moment
+something in her husband's look and manner dominated her. For a moment
+she was in subjection. She sat still staring at Claude, waiting for him
+to speak. He sat looking down, and it seemed to her as if he were
+wrestling as Jacob wrestled with the angel. His white forehead drew her
+eyes. She was filled with fear; but when he looked up at her the fear
+grew. She felt almost sick&mdash;sick with apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!" she said. "Oh, Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that his eyes had put a great question to her, and now her
+voice had answered it.</p>
+
+<p>Claude turned to Armand Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," he said, "you can't have your libretto back. It's mine, and
+I'm going to keep it."</p>
+
+<p>When Gillier was gone Charmian said, almost in a faltering voice, and
+with none of her usual self-possession of manner:</p>
+
+<p>"How&mdash;how could you bear that man's insults as you did?"</p>
+
+<p>"His insults?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked at her in silence. And again she was conscious of fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let us ever speak of this again," he answered at last.</p>
+
+<p>He went away.</p>
+
+<p>That day he was in his workroom till very late. He did not come to tea.
+The evening fell; but he was not working on the opera. Charmian heard
+him playing Bach.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At the end of April Alston Lake came once more to visit them.</p>
+
+<p>Since those London days when they had first met him Lake had made great
+progress toward the fulfilment of his ambition. His energy and will were
+beginning to reap a good reward. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> was making money, enough money to
+live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford,
+had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera.
+When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an
+infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a
+light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and
+sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that was boyish still
+pleasantly lingered with him. In him, too, there was something
+courageous that inspired courage in others.</p>
+
+<p>This time he announced he could stay for a month if they did not mind.
+He wanted a thorough rest before the many concerts he was going to sing
+at during the London season. Both Charmian and Claude were delighted.
+When Claude heard of it he was silent for a moment. Then he began to
+reckon.</p>
+
+<p>"The thirtieth to-day, isn't it? By a month do you mean a month or four
+weeks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, four weeks, old chap!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is less than a month."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it weren't. But I have to sing in London at the Bechstein Hall
+early in June. So I'm running it pretty close as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"May the twenty-eighth you go, then," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it. But why these higher mathematics?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude only smiled and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"What is he up to, Mrs. Charmian?" asked Lake mystified.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he want to get rid of me? Is that why he was so keen to know
+whether it was four weeks or a month?" said Lake, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that probably is it. But come up and see the flowers I've
+put in your room."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a little Paradise," said Lake, in his ringing baritone voice.
+"Sometimes this winter in Paris, when I was all in, don't you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blues."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'd think of Djenan-el-Maqui, and wish I was a composer instead of a
+singer&mdash;for a fifth of a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said reproachfully. "Only a fifth!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. It wasn't long. But you see I'm born to sing, so I'm bound to
+love it more than anything else. Making a noise&mdash;oh, it's rare!"</p>
+
+<p>He opened his mouth and ran up a scale to the high A.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get there pretty well now, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid! Your voice gets bigger and bigger!" she said, with real
+enthusiasm. "But it's almost&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you're going to say; but I shall always be a baritone. If
+you knew as much as I do about baritones turned into tenors, you'd say,
+'Leave it alone, my boy!' and that's what I'm going to do. Now what
+about these flowers? It is good to be here."</p>
+
+<p>Claude did not join Alston Lake in making holiday. Indeed, Charmian
+noticed that he was working much harder than usual, as if Lake's coming
+had been an incentive to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't apologize to you, Alston," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Odd if you did when I was the first to try and set you on to an opera.
+Besides, you can't get ahead too fast now. There's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford'll be over this summer," he remarked, giving a casual tone to
+his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>And the conversation dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Only in the early morning, and for an hour, or an hour and a half after
+lunch, did Claude intermit his labors. In the morning the three of them
+rode, on good horses hired from the Vitoz stables. After lunch they sat
+in the little court of the fountain, smoked and talked. Conversation
+never flagged when Alston was there. His young energy bred a desire for
+expression in those about him. And Charmian and Claude were now his most
+intimate friends. He identified himself with them in a charming way, was
+devoted to their fortunes, and assumed, without a trace of conceit,
+their devotion to his. When Claude, about three o'clock, got up and went
+away to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> his workroom Alston often went off for a stroll alone. Between
+tea and dinner time, if Charmian had no engagement, she and Alston
+walked together in the scented Bois de Boulogne, past "Tananarivo," or
+drove down to the Jardin d'Essai, and spent an hour there near the
+shimmering sea.</p>
+
+<p>In these many intimate hours Charmian learnt to appreciate the chivalry
+and delicacy peculiar to well-bred American men in their relations with
+women. Although she and Alston were both young, and she was an
+attractive woman, she felt as safe with him as if he were her brother.
+His life in Paris had left him entirely unspoiled, had even left him in
+possession of the characteristic and open-hearted na&iuml;vet&eacute; which was one
+of his chief attractions, though he was quite unaware of it. She was
+very happy with Alston. But often she thought of Claude, far away on the
+hill, shut in, resigning all this freedom, this delicious open-air life,
+which she was enjoying with his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"He's working almost too hard," she said one day when they were sitting
+in the Jardin d'Essai, "and he will work at night now. He never used to
+do that. Don't you think he's beginning to look rather white and worn
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with some anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes he does look a bit tired," Alston allowed. "But a man's bound
+to when he puts his back into a thing. And there's not much doubt as to
+whether old Claude's back is in the opera. I say, Mrs. Charmian, how far
+has he got exactly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Practically the whole of the music is composed, I believe. It's the
+orchestration that takes such a lot of time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and how far has that got? Claude's never told me plump out.
+Composers never do. And I know better than to pump them. It's
+fatal&mdash;that! They simply can't stand it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I believe the opera might be ready by the end of this year."</p>
+
+<p>"Not before then?"</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other, then Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Alston, if you only knew how difficult it is to me to wait&mdash;to wait
+and not to show any impatience to him. Sometimes&mdash;well, now and then,
+I've shut myself in and cried with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> impatience, cried angrily. I've
+wanted to bite things. One day I actually did bite a pillow."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, but her cheeks were flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the perpetual keeping it in that is such a torment. I know how
+wicked it would be to hurry him. And he does work so hard. And I've
+heard of people taking ten years over an opera. Claude only began about
+a year and five months ago. He's been marvellously quick, really. But,
+oh, sometimes I feel as if this suppressed impatience were making me
+ill, physically and mentally, as if it were a kind of poison stealing
+all through me! Can you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can I? You bet! I only wish the thing could be ready before Crayford
+goes back to the States."</p>
+
+<p>"When does he go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some time in September, I believe. He goes on the Continent after July.
+Of course, July he's in London, June too. Then he has his cure at
+Divonne. If only&mdash;&mdash; When do you come to London?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian suddenly grasped his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Alston, I'll keep him here, give up London, anything to have the opera
+finished by the end of August!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but the heat!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it's too hot upon the hill where we are, with all those
+trees. Every afternoon I expect there's a breeze from the sea. I know we
+could stand it. It's only April now. That would mean four solid months
+of steady work. But then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd bring Crayford over."</p>
+
+<p>"Would he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd make him."</p>
+
+<p>"But we might&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Charmian. He ought to hear it in Mustapha. I know him. He's a
+hard business man. But he's awfully susceptible too. And then he's great
+on scenic effects. Now, he's never been in Africa. Think of the glamour
+of it, especially in summer, when the real Africa emerges, by Gee, in
+all its blue and fire! We'd plunge him in it, you and I. That Casbah
+scene&mdash;you know, the third act! I'd take him there by moonlight on a
+September night&mdash;full moon&mdash;show him the women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> on their terraces and in
+their courts, the town dropping down to the silver below, while the
+native music&mdash;by Gee! We'd dazzle him, we'd spread the magic carpet for
+him, we'd carry him away till he couldn't say no, till he'd be as mad on
+the thing as we are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Alston, if we could!"</p>
+
+<p>She had caught all his enthusiasm. It seemed to her that in North Africa
+Mr. Crayford could not refuse the opera. From that moment she had made
+up her mind. No London season! Whatever happened, she and Claude were
+going to remain at Djenan-el-Maqui till the opera was finished, finished
+to the last detail. That very evening she spoke about it to Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie," she said. "Are you very keen on going to London this year?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her as if almost startled.</p>
+
+<p>"I? But, surely&mdash;do you mean that you don't want to go?"</p>
+
+<p>She moved her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Not one little bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but then where do you wish to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where? Why should we go anywhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to love this little house, the garden, even those absurd
+goldfish that are always looking for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but the heat!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice did not sound reluctant or protesting, only a little doubtful
+and surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of people stay. Algiers doesn't empty of human beings, only of
+travellers, because it's summer. And we are up on a height."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true. And I could work on quietly."</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely undisturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"The only thing is I meant to see Jernington."</p>
+
+<p>Jernington was the professor with whom Claude studied orchestration in
+London.</p>
+
+<p>"Get him over here."</p>
+
+<p>"Jernington! Why, he never leaves London!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get him to for a month. We'll pay all his expenses and everything, of
+course."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How you go ahead!" he said, laughing. "You must be a twin of Alston's,
+I think."</p>
+
+<p>"What has got to be done can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but the expense; you know, Charmian, we live right up to our
+income."</p>
+
+<p>"Hang the expense! Oh, as Alston would say!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You really are a marvellous wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I? Am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might sound old Jernington. He'll think I'm raving mad, but still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope," she said, smiling and eager, "that he won't be so raving
+sane as to refuse."</p>
+
+<p>"But what will Madre think, not seeing you&mdash;us, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. But Madre has never come to see us here."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charmian, there could never be a cloud between Madre and us!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, never! Still, why has she never come?"</p>
+
+<p>"She really hates the sea. You know she has never in her life done more
+than cross the Channel."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that is the reason why she has never come?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, Madre is strange sometimes. Don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Strange? She is absolutely herself. She does not take anyone else's
+color, if that is what you mean. I love that in her."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. Still, I think she is strange."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Alston came in and the conversation dropped. But both
+husband and wife thought many times of "Madre" that day, and not without
+a certain uneasiness. Was the heart of the mother with them in their
+enterprise?</p>
+
+<p>Charmian put that question to herself. But Claude did not put it. He
+thought of Mrs. Mansfield's intense and fiery eyes. They saw far, saw
+deep. He loved them, the look in them. But he must try to forget them.
+He must give himself to the enthusiasm of his wife and of Alston Lake.</p>
+
+<p>He sent a long telegram to Jernington, saying how difficult it was for
+him to leave Mustapha, and begging Jernington to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> come over during the
+summer so that they might work together in quiet. All expenses were to
+be paid. Next day he received a telegram from Jernington: "Very
+difficult is it absolutely impossible for you to come to England?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer that," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>She telegraphed, "Absolutely impossible&mdash;<span class="smcap">Heath</span>."</p>
+
+<p>In the late evening a second telegram came from Jernington: "Very well
+suppose I must come&mdash;<span class="smcap">Jernington</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian laughed as she read it over Claude's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"The pathos of it," she said. "Poor old Jernington! He is
+horror-stricken. Bury St. Edmunds has been his farthest beat till now
+except for his year in Germany. Claudie, he loves the opera or he would
+never have consented to come. I felt it was a test. The opera, the
+child, has stood it triumphantly. I love old Jernington. And he is a
+first-rate critic, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of orchestration, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"That's half the battle in an opera. I feel so happy. Let us have an
+audition to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And play us an act right through; the first act. Alston has only heard
+it in bits."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't really care for anyone to hear it yet," Claude said, with
+obvious reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he desired a verdict&mdash;of praise. He longed for encouragement. In old
+days, when he had composed for himself, he had felt indifferent to that.
+But now he was working on something which was planned, which was being
+executed, with the intention to strike upon the imagination of a big
+public. He was no longer indifferent. He was secretly anxious. He longed
+to be told that what he was doing was good.</p>
+
+<p>That evening he was genuinely warmed by the enthusiasm of his wife and
+of Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"And surely," he said to himself, "they would be inclined to be more
+critical than others, to be hypercritical."</p>
+
+<p>He forgot that in some natures desire creates conviction.</p>
+
+<p>On the last day of Alston's visit Charmian and he understood why
+Claude's mathematical powers had been brought to bear on the question of
+its exact duration. Claude himself explained with rather a rueful face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hoped&mdash;I thought if you were going to stay for the extra days I might
+possibly have the finale of the opera finished. Even when you told me
+your month meant four weeks I thought I would have a tremendous try to
+complete it. Well, I have had a tremendous try. But I've failed. I must
+have two more weeks, I believe, before I conquer the monster."</p>
+
+<p>He was looking very pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and moved his
+hands nervously while he was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"That was it!" exclaimed Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that was it."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and Alston exchanged a quick glance.</p>
+
+<p>"When you've done the finale," Alston said, with the firmness of one who
+spoke with permission, even perhaps by special request, "will the opera
+be practically finished?"</p>
+
+<p>"Finished? Good Heavens, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but if it's the finale of the whole opera?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got bits here and there to do, and a lot to re-do."</p>
+
+<p>Again Charmian and the American exchanged glances.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, old chap," said Alston. "You read Balzac, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. But what has that to do with the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever read that story of his about a painter who was always
+striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for
+ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One
+day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they
+found a mere mess of paint representing nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Claude, rather stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got a splendid talent. I hope you're going to trust it."</p>
+
+<p>Claude said nothing, and Alston, in his easy, almost boyish way, glanced
+off to some other topic. But before he started for England he said to
+Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"Do watch him a bit if you can, Mrs. Charmian, for over-elaboration.
+Don't let him work it to death, I mean, till all the spontaneity is
+gone. I believe that's a danger with him. Somehow I think he lacks
+complete confidence in himself."</p>
+
+<p>"You see it's the first time he has ever tried to do an opera."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I know. It's natural enough. But do watch out for over-elaboration."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try to. But I have to be very careful with Claude."</p>
+
+<p>"How d'you mean exactly?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can be very reserved."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but you know how to take him. And&mdash;well&mdash;we can't let the opera be
+anything but a big success, can we?"</p>
+
+<p>If Claude had heard that "we!"</p>
+
+<p>"I say, shall we walk around the garden?" Alston added, after a pause.
+"It isn't quite time to go, and I want to talk over things before Claude
+comes down to see the last of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>They went out, and descended the steps from the terrace.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Charmian, that I'm going to bring Crayford
+over whatever happens, whether the opera's done or not. There's heaps
+ready for him to judge by. And you must read him the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"I?" exclaimed Charmian, startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you. Study it up! Recite it to yourself. Learn to give it all and
+more than its value. That libretto is going to catch hold of Crayford
+right away, if you read it, and read it well."</p>
+
+<p>When she had recovered from her first shock of surprise Charmian felt
+radiantly happy. She had something to do. Alston, with his shrewd
+outlook, was bringing her a step farther into this enterprise. He was
+right. She remembered Crayford. A woman should read him the libretto,
+and in a <i>d&eacute;cor</i>&mdash;swiftly her imagination began to work. The <i>d&eacute;cor</i>
+should be perfection; and her gown!</p>
+
+<p>"How clever of you to think of that, Alston!" she exclaimed. "I'll study
+as if I were going to be an actress."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the proposition! By Jove, you and I understand each other over
+this. I know Crayford by heart. We've got to what the French call
+'<i>&eacute;blouir</i>' him when we get him here. We must play upon him with the
+scenery proposition; what he can do in the way of wonderful new stage
+effects. When we've got him thoroughly worked up over the libretto and
+the scenery prop., we'll begin to let him hear the music, but not a
+moment before. We can't be too careful, Mrs. Charmian.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> Crayford's a man
+who doesn't start going in a hurry on newly laid rails. He wants to test
+every sleeper pretty nearly. But once get him going, and the evening
+express from New York City to Chicago isn't in it with him. Now you and
+I have got to get him started before ever he comes to old Claude. In
+fact&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, put one finger to his firm round chin.</p>
+
+<p>"But we can decide that a bit later on."</p>
+
+<p>"That? What, Alston?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to say it might be as well to get Claude out of the way for
+a day or two while we start on old Crayford here. I suppose it could be
+managed somehow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alston&mdash;" Charmian stopped on the path between the geraniums. "Anything
+can be managed that will help to persuade Mr. Crayford to accept
+Claude's opera."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are. That's talking! I'll think it all over and let you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she exclaimed. "How I wish the end of August was here! You'll be
+in London. All your time will be filled up. You'll be singing, being
+applauded, <i>getting on</i>. And I have to sit here, and wait&mdash;wait."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be studying the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"So I shall!"</p>
+
+<p>She sent him a grateful look.</p>
+
+<p>"What a good friend you are to us, Alston!" she said, and there was
+heart at that moment in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And haven't you been good friends to me? What about the studio? What
+about the Prophet's Chamber? Why, you've given me a sort of a home and
+family, you and old Claude. I can tell you I've often felt lonesome in
+Europe, I've often felt all in, right away from everybody, and my Dad
+trying to starve me out, and all my people dead against what I was
+doing. Since I've known you, well, I've felt quite bully in comparison
+with what it used to be. Claude's success and yours, it's just going to
+be my success too. And that's all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>He wrung her hand and shouted for Claude.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly time for him to go.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jernington, after sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost
+deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram,
+arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great
+deal of fuss and very little luggage.</p>
+
+<p>The Heaths welcomed him warmly.</p>
+
+<p>Although he was a native of Suffolk, and had only spent a year in
+Germany, he succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student.
+Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with
+Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his
+head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were
+pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just
+above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh.
+Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently
+boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave
+a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed
+for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic
+sides.</p>
+
+<p>In his special line he was a man of extraordinary talent.</p>
+
+<p>He had intended to be a composer, but had little faculty for original
+work. His knowledge of composition, nevertheless, was enormous, and he
+was the best orchestral "coach" in England.</p>
+
+<p>His heart was in his work. His devotion to a clever pupil knew no
+limits. And he considered Claude the cleverest pupil he had ever taught.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, therefore, accepted him with enthusiasm&mdash;boots, tie, little
+roll of white flesh, the whole of him.</p>
+
+<p>He settled down with them in Mustapha, once he had been conveyed into
+the house, as comfortably as a cat in front of whom, with every tender
+precaution, has been placed a bowl of rich milk. In a couple of days it
+seemed as if he had always been there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Charmian did not see very much of him. The two men toiled with diligence
+despite the great heat which lay over the land. They began early in the
+morning before the sun was high, rested and slept in the middle of the
+day, resumed work about five, and, with an interval for dinner, went on
+till late in the night.</p>
+
+<p>The English Colony had long since broken up. Only the British
+Vice-Consul and his wife remained, and they lived a good way out in the
+country. Since May few people had come to disturb the peace of
+Djenan-el-Maqui. Charmian dwelt in a strange and sun-smitten isolation.
+She was very much alone. Only now and then some French acquaintance
+would call to see her and sit with her for a little while at evening in
+the garden, or in the courtyard of the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty, the fierce romance of this land, sometimes excited her
+spirit. Sometimes, with fiery hands, it lulled her into a condition
+almost of apathy. She listened to the fountain, she looked at the sea
+which was always blue, and she felt almost as if some part of her nature
+had fallen away from her, leaving her vague and fragmentary, a Charmian
+lacking some virtue, or vice, that had formerly been hers and had made
+her salient. But this apathy did not last long. The sound of
+Jernington's strangely German voice talking loudly above would disturb
+it, perhaps, or the noise of chords or passages powerfully struck upon
+the piano. And immediately the child was with her again, she was busy
+thinking, planning, hoping, longing, concentrated on the future of the
+child.</p>
+
+<p>She had studied the libretto minutely, had practised reading it aloud.
+It was of course written in French, and she found a clever woman,
+retired from a theatrical career in Paris, Madame Th&eacute;nant, who gave her
+lessons in elocution, and who finally said that she read the libretto
+"<i>assez bien</i>." This from Madame Th&eacute;nant, who had played Dowagers at the
+Com&eacute;die Francaise, was a high compliment. Charmian felt that she was
+ready to make an effect on Jacob Crayford. She was in active
+correspondence with Alston Lake, who was still in London, and who had
+had greater success than before. From him she knew that Crayford was in
+town, and would take his usual "cure" in August at Divonne-les-Bains.
+Lake had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> "begun upon him" warily, but had not yet even hinted at the
+visit to Africa. After his "cure" Crayford proposed making a motor tour.
+He thought nothing of running all over Europe in his car. Lake was going
+presently to speak of the perfect surfaces of the Algerian roads, "the
+best way perhaps of getting him to go to Algeria." He still wanted
+operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in
+London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he?
+Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude
+wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after
+Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband.
+Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually
+returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of
+it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had
+shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected,
+had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he
+saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the
+giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had
+evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away
+and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had
+inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera."
+Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe
+anyway, where folk could get at him if they wanted to?" had been the
+next question. Lake's answer had rather indicated that the composer was
+very glad to have a good stretch of ocean between himself and any "folk"
+who might want to get at him.</p>
+
+<p>This was the point at which the Lake correspondence with Charmian stood
+in the first week of August. His last letter lay on her knee one
+afternoon, as she sat in a hidden nook at the bottom of the garden, with
+delicate bamboos rustling in a warm south wind about her.</p>
+
+<p>Claude knew nothing of this exchange of letters, of all the planning and
+plotting. It was all for him. Some day, when the result was success, he
+should be told everything, unless by that time it was too late, and the
+steps to success were all forgotten. Charmian did nothing to disturb
+him. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> wished him to be obsessed by the work, to do it now merely for
+its own sake. The result of his labors would probably be better if that
+were so. If Crayford did come&mdash;and he must come! Charmian was willing it
+every day&mdash;his coming would be a surprise to Claude, and would seem to
+be a surprise to Charmian. She would get rid of Claude for a few days
+when Lake forewarned her that their arrival was imminent; would persuade
+him to take a little holiday, to go, perhaps, up into the cork woods to
+Hammam R'rirha. He was very pale, had dark circles beneath his eyes. The
+incessant work was beginning to tell upon him severely. Charmian saw
+that. But how could she beg him to rest now, when Jernington had come
+out, when it was so vital to their interests that the opera should be
+finished as soon as possible! Besides, she was certain that even if she
+spoke Claude would not listen to her. Jernington, so he said, always
+gave him an impetus, always excited him. It was a keen pleasure to show
+a man of such deep knowledge what he had been doing, a keener pleasure
+still when he approved, when he said, in his German voice, "That goes!"
+And they had been trying over passages with instrumentalists who had
+been "unearthed," as Jernington expressed it, in Algiers. They had got
+hold of a horn player, had found another man who played the clarinet,
+the violin, and a third instrument.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, they were living for, and in, the opera. And Charmian, devoured
+by her secret ambition, had no heart to play a careful wife's part. She
+had the will to urge her man on. She had no will to hold him back.
+Afterward he could rest, he should rest&mdash;on the bed of his laurels.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled now when she thought of that.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she felt that some one was approaching her. She looked up and
+saw Jernington coming down the path, wiping his pale forehead with a
+silk handkerchief in which various colors seemed fortuitously combined.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the work over?" she cried out to him.</p>
+
+<p>He threw up one square-nailed white hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But for once he has got a passage all wrong. I have left him to
+correct it. He kicked me out, in fact!"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington threw back his head and laughed gutturally. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> laugh always
+contradicted his eyes. They were romantic, but his laugh was prosaic.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down by Charmian and put his hands on his knees. One still
+grasped the handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mr. Jernington, tell me!" she said. "You know so much. Claude says
+your knowledge is extraordinary. Isn't the opera fine?"</p>
+
+<p>Now Jernington was a specialist, and he was one of those men who cannot
+detach their minds from the subject in which they specialize in order to
+take a broad view. His vision was extraordinarily acute, but it was
+strictly limited. When Charmian spoke of the opera he believed he was
+thinking of the opera as a whole, whereas he was in reality only
+thinking about the orchestration of it.</p>
+
+<p>"It is superb!" he replied enthusiastically. "Never before have I had a
+pupil with such talent as your husband."</p>
+
+<p>With a rapid movement he put one hand to the back of his neck and softly
+rubbed his little roll of white flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"He has an instinct for orchestration such as I have found in no one
+else. Now, for example&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself into depths of orchestral knowledge, dragging Charmian
+with him. She was happily engulfed. When they emerged in about half an
+hour's time she again threw out a lure for general praise.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you really admire the opera as a whole? You think it undoubtedly
+fine, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington wiped his perspiring face, his forehead, and, finally, his
+whole head and neck, manipulating the huge handkerchief in a masterly
+manner almost worthy of an expensive conjurer.</p>
+
+<p>"It is superb. When it is given, when the world knows that the great
+Heath studied with me&mdash;well, I shall have to take a studio as large as
+the Albert Hall, there will be such a rush of pupils. Do you know that
+his employment of the oboe in combination with the flute, the strings
+being divided&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And once more he plunged down into the depths of orchestral knowledge
+taking Charmian with him. He quoted Prout, he quoted Vincent d'Indy; he
+minutely compared passages in Elgar's second symphony with passages in
+Tchai<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>kovsky's fifth symphony; he dissected the delicate orchestral
+effects in Debussy's <i>Nuages</i> and <i>F&ecirc;te Nocturne</i>, compared the modern
+French methods in orchestration with Richard Strauss's gigantic, and
+sometimes monstrous combinations. But again and again he returned to his
+pupil, Claude. As he talked his enthusiasm mounted. The little roll of
+flesh trembled as he emphatically moved his head. His voice grew
+harsher, more German. He untied and reknotted his flowing cravat, pulled
+up his boots with elastic sides, thrust his cuffs, which were not
+attached to his shirt, violently out of sight up his plump arms.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian could not doubt his admiration for the opera. It was expressed
+in a manner peculiar to Jernington that became almost epileptic, but it
+was undoubtedly sincere.</p>
+
+<p>When he left her and went back to Claude's workroom she was glowing with
+pride and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"That funny old thing knows!" she thought. "He knows!"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington was usually called an old thing, although he was not yet
+forty.</p>
+
+<p>His departure was due about the twentieth of August, but when that day
+drew near Claude begged him to stay on till the end of the month.
+Charmian was secretly dismayed. She had news from Lake that his campaign
+on Claude's behalf had every prospect of success. Crayford was now at
+Divonne-les-Bains, but had invited Lake to join him in a motor tour as
+soon as his "cure"&mdash;by no means a severe one&mdash;was over.</p>
+
+<p>"That tour, Mrs. Charmian, as I'm a living man with good prospects, will
+end on the quay at Marseilles, and start again on the quay at Algiers.
+Crayford has tried to bring off a fresh deal with Sennier, but been
+beaten off by the pierrot in petticoats, as he calls the great
+Henriette. She asked for the earth, and all the planets and
+constellations besides. Now they are at daggers drawn. That's bully for
+us. Take out your bottom dollar, and bet it that I bring him over before
+September is ten days old."</p>
+
+<p>September&mdash;yes. But Lake was impulsive. He might hurry things, might
+arrive with the impresario sooner. Jernington must not be at
+Djenan-el-Maqui when he arrived. If Claude were found studying with a
+sort of professor Cray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>ford would certainly get a wrong impression. It
+might just make the difference between the success of the great plan and
+its failure. Claude must present himself, or be presented by Lake as a
+master, not as a pupil.</p>
+
+<p>She must get rid of old Jernington as soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p>But it now became alarmingly manifest that old Jernington was in no
+hurry to go. He was one of those persons who arrive with great
+difficulty, but who find an even greater difficulty in bringing
+themselves to the point of departure. Never having been out of Europe
+before, it seemed that he was not unwilling to end his days in a
+tropical exile. He "felt" the heat terribly, but professed to like it,
+was charmed with the villa and the comfort of the life, and "really had
+no need to hurry away" now that he had definitely relinquished his
+annual holiday at Bury St. Edmunds.</p>
+
+<p>As Claude wished him to stay on, and had no suspicion that any plan was
+in the wind, Charmian found herself in a difficult position as the days
+went by and the end of August drew near. Her imagination revolved about
+all sorts of preposterous means for getting rid of the poor fellow, whom
+she honestly liked, and to whom she was grateful for his enthusiastic
+labors. She thought of making a hole in his mosquito net, to permit the
+entry of those marauders whom he dreaded; of casually mentioning that
+there had been cases suspiciously resembling Asiatic cholera in the
+Casbah of Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must
+take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a
+telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in
+his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought
+of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of
+circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died
+almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in
+number as they were robust in constitution.</p>
+
+<p>She dismissed the idea of the telegram. She even said to herself that of
+course she had never entertained it. But what was she to do?</p>
+
+<p>She tried to be a little cold to Jernington, thinking it might be
+possible to convey to him subtly the idea that perhaps his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> visit had
+lasted long enough, that his hostess had other plans in which his
+presence was not included.</p>
+
+<p>But Jernington was conscious of no subtleties except those connected
+with the employment of musical instruments. And Charmian found it almost
+impossible to be glacial to such a simple and warm-hearted creature. His
+very boots seemed to claim her cordiality with their unabashed elastic
+sides. The way in which he pushed his cuffs out of sight appealed to the
+goodness of her heart, although it displeased her &aelig;sthetic sense. She
+had to recognize the fact that old Jernington was one of those tiresome
+people you cannot be unkind to.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she must get him out of the house and out of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>If he stuck to the plan of leaving them at the end of August there would
+probably be no need of diplomacy, or of forcible ejection; but it had
+become obvious to Charmian that the last thing old Jernington was
+capable of doing was just that sticking to a plan.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to sail on the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i> or the <i>Ville d'Alger</i>?"
+she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he replied artlessly. "In my idea Berlioz was not really the
+founder of modern orchestration as some have asserted. Your husband and
+I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not stop him. She began to feel almost as if she hated the
+delicious orchestral family. Jernington had a special passion for the
+oboe. Charmian found herself absurdly feeling against that rustic and
+Arcadian charmer an enmity such as she had scarcely ever experienced
+against a human being. One night she spoke unkindly, almost with a
+warmth of malignity, about the oboe. Jernington sprang amorously to its
+defense. She tried to quarrel with him, but was disarmed by his fidelity
+to the object of his affections. She was too much a woman to rail
+against fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>The 30th of August arrived. In the afternoon of that day she received
+the following telegram from Alston Lake:</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Crayford and I start motor trip to-morrow he thinks Germany have no
+fear all right Marseilles or I Dutchman.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lake</span>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As she read this telegram Charmian knew that the two men would come to
+Algiers. She believed in Alston Lake. He had an extraordinary faculty
+for carrying things through; and Crayford was fond of him. Crayford had
+been kind, generous to the boy, and loved him as a man may love his own
+good action. Lake, as he had said in private to Charmian, could "do a
+lot with dear old Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>He would certainly bring Crayford to Mustapha. Old Jernington must go.</p>
+
+<p>The 31st of August dawned and began to fade.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt desperate. She resolved to tackle Claude on the matter.
+Old Jernington would never understand unless she said to him, "Go! For
+Heaven's sake, go!" And even then he would probably think that she was
+saying the reverse of what she meant, in an effort after that type of
+playful humor which, for all she knew, perhaps still prevailed in his
+native Suffolk. She had bent Claude to her purposes before. She must
+bend him to her purpose now.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie," she said, "you know what an old dear I think Jernington,
+don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked up at her with rather searching eyes. She had come into
+his workroom at sunset. All day she had been considering what would be
+the best thing to do. Old Jernington was strolling in the garden smoking
+a very German pipe after having been "at it" for many hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Jernington?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, old Jernington."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he's an excellent fellow. What about him?"</p>
+
+<p>She sat down delicately. She was looking very calm, and her movement was
+very quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm beginning almost to hate him!" she remarked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I tell you are you going to get angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I get angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking very fierce."</p>
+
+<p>He altered his expression.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the work," he muttered. "When one grinds as I do one does feel
+fierce."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's why I'm beginning to&mdash;well, love Mr. Jernington a little less
+than I used to. He's almost killing you."</p>
+
+<p>"Jernington!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It's got to stop."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice and manner had quite changed. She spoke now with earnest and
+very serious decision.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"The work, Claude. I've seen for some time that unless you take a short
+holiday you are going to break down."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you have always encouraged me to work!"</p>
+
+<p>She noticed a faint suspicion in his expression and voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I've been too eager, too keen on the opera. I haven't realized
+what a strain you are going through. But&mdash;it's just like a woman, I'm
+afraid!&mdash;now I see another urging you on, I see plainly. It may be
+jealousy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You jealous of old Jernington!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I am a tiny bit. But, apart really from that, you are looking
+dreadful these last few days. When you asked Jernington to prolong his
+visit I was horrified. You see, he's come to it all fresh. And then he's
+not creating. That's the tiring work. It's all very well helping and
+criticising."</p>
+
+<p>"That's very true," Claude said.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed heavily. She had told him that he was very tired, and he felt
+that he was very tired.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a great strain," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"It has got to stop, Claude."</p>
+
+<p>There was a little silence. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"These extra months have made a great difference, haven't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enormous."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got on very far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Farther than I had thought would be possible."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart bounded. But she only said:</p>
+
+<p>"There's a boat to Marseilles the day after to-morrow. Old Jernington is
+going by it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Charmian, we can't pack the dear old fellow&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The dear old fellow is going by that boat, Claudie."</p>
+
+<p>"But what a tyrant you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been selfish. My keenness about your work has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> blinded me.
+Jernington has made me see. We've been two slave-drivers. It can't go
+on. If he could stay and be different&mdash;but he can't. He's a marvel of
+learning, but he has only one subject&mdash;orchestration. You've got to
+forget that for a little. So Jernington must go. Dear old boy! When I
+see your pale cheeks and your burning eyes I&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Tears came into her eyes. From beneath the trickster the woman arose.
+Her own words touched her suddenly, made her understand how Claude had
+sacrificed himself to his work, and so to her ambition. She got up and
+turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Jernington shall go by the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i>," she said, in a
+voice that slightly shook.</p>
+
+<p>And by the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i> old Jernington did go.</p>
+
+<p>So ingeniously did Charmian manage things that he believed he went of
+his own accord, indeed that it had been his "idea" to go. She told
+Claude to leave it to her and not to say one word. Then she went to
+Jernington, and began to talk of his extraordinary influence over her
+husband. He soon pulled at his boots, thrust his cuffs up his arms, and
+showed other unmistakable symptoms of gratification.</p>
+
+<p>"You can do anything with him," she said presently. "I wish I could."</p>
+
+<p>Jernington protested with guttural exclamations.</p>
+
+<p>"He's killing himself," she resumed. "And I have to sit by and see it,
+and say nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Killing himself!"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington, who believed in women, was shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"With overwork. He's on the verge of a complete breakdown. And it's you,
+Mr. Jernington, it's all you!"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington was more than shocked. His gratification had vanished. A
+piteous, almost a guilty expression, came into his large fair face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ach!" he exclaimed. "What have I done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's not your fault. But Claude almost worships you. He thinks
+there is no one like you. He's afraid to lose a moment of time while you
+are with him. Your learning, your enthusiasm excite him till he's beside
+himself. He can't rest with such a worker as you in the house, and no
+wonder. You are an inspiration to him. Who could rest with such an
+influ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>ence near? What are we to do? Unless he has a complete holiday he
+is going to break completely down. Do watch him to-day! Notice! See for
+yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>Jernington, much impressed&mdash;for Charmian's despair had been very
+definite indeed, "oleographic in type," as she acknowledged to
+herself&mdash;did notice, did see for himself, and inquired innocently of
+Charmian what was to be done.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave that to you," she answered, fixing her eyes almost hypnotically
+upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Secretly she was willing him to go. She was saying in her mind: "Go! Go!
+Go!" was striving to "suggestion" him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;" he paused, and pulled his cuffs down over his large, pale
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I had better take him away for a little holiday."</p>
+
+<p>She could have slapped him. But she only said eagerly:</p>
+
+<p>"To England, you mean! Why not? There's a boat going the day after
+to-morrow take your passage on the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i>. Don't say a word
+to Claude. But and leave the rest to me. I know how to manage Claude.
+And if I get a little help from you!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Jernington took his passage on the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i> and left the
+rest to Charmian, with this result. Late the next night, when they were
+all going to bed, she whispered to him, "I've put a note in your room.
+Don't say a word to him!" She touched her lips. Much intrigued by all
+this feminine diplomacy Jernington went to his room, and found the
+following note under a candlestick. (Charmian had a sense of the
+dramatic.)</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Jernington</span>,&mdash;Claude <i>won't</i> go. It's no use for
+me to say anything. He is in a highly nervous state brought on by
+this overwork. I see the only thing is to let him have his own way
+in everything. Don't even mention that we had thought of this
+holiday in England. The least thing excites him. And as he <i>won't</i>
+go, what is the use of speaking of it? If I can get him to join you
+later well and good. For the moment we can only give in and be
+discreet. You have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> such a dear to us both. The house will
+seem quite different without you. <i>Not a word to Claude. Burn
+this!</i></p>
+
+<p class='author'>"C. H."</p></div>
+
+<p>And old Jernington burnt it in the flame of the candle, and went away
+alone on the <i>Mar&eacute;chal Bugeaud</i> the next morning, with apologies to
+Claude.</p>
+
+<p>The house did seem to Charmian quite different without him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later, on the 4th of September, Charmian had got rid of Claude
+as well as of old Jernington, and, in a condition of expectation that
+was tinged agreeably with triumph, was awaiting the arrival of important
+visitors. She had received a telegram from Lake:</p>
+
+<p>"Have got him into the Chateaux country going on to Orange hope on hope
+ever&mdash;<span class="smcap">Alston</span>."</p>
+
+<p>And she knew that the fateful motor would inevitably find its way to the
+quay at Marseilles.</p>
+
+<p>She had had no difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington
+had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked
+from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt
+as if in the little house which had seen his work he could not rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away," Charmian said to him. "Take a couple of weeks' complete
+holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not going."</p>
+
+<p>He looked surprised. But she noticed that he did not look displeased.
+Nevertheless, thinking of the future and remembering Alston Lake's
+advice, she continued:</p>
+
+<p>"You need a complete change of people as well as of place. Is there
+anyone left in Algiers?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't come," he interrupted her quickly, "I'd much rather go
+quite alone. It will rest me much more."</p>
+
+<p>She saw by the look in his eyes that this sudden prospect of loneliness
+appealed to him strongly. He moved his shoulders, stretched out his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it will do me good. You are right, Charmian. It is sweet of you to
+think for me as you do."</p>
+
+<p>And he bent down and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>Then he hurried to his room, packed a very small trunk, and took the
+first train, as she had suggested, to Hammam R'rirha.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you move from there mind you let me know your address," she said, as
+he was starting.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"I want always to know just where you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I shall let you know. But I think I shall stay quietly at
+Hammam R'rirha."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the <i>Timgad</i>
+Hurrah&mdash;<span class="smcap">Alston</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she
+hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they
+would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more
+than well. The omens were good. She saw in them a tendency. Success was
+in the air. She did not doubt, she would not doubt, that Crayford's
+coming meant his eventual acceptance of the opera. The combination of
+Alston and herself was a strong one. They knew their own minds; they
+were both enthusiasts; they both had strong wills. Crayford was devoted
+to his prot&eacute;g&eacute;, and he admired her. She had seen admiration in his eyes
+the first time they had looked at her. Madame Sennier had surely never
+worked for her husband more strenuously and more effectively than she,
+Charmian, had worked for Claude; and she would work more strenuously,
+more effectively, during the next few days. The libretto! She snatched
+it up and sat down once more to study it. But she could not sit still,
+and she took it down with her into the garden. There she paced up and
+down, reading it aloud, reciting the strongest passages in it without
+looking at the words. She nearly knew the whole of it by heart.</p>
+
+<p>When the day came on which the <i>Timgad</i> was due she was in a fever of
+excitement. She went about the little house re-arranging the furniture,
+putting flowers in all the vases. Of course Mr. Crayford and Alston
+would stay at a hotel. But no doubt they would spend a good deal of time
+at the villa. She would insist on their dining with her that night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Jeanne! Jeanne!"</p>
+
+<p>She hurried toward the kitchen. It occurred to her that she was not
+supposed to know that the two men were coming. Oh, but of course, when
+he found them there, Claude would understand that naturally Alston had
+telegraphed from Marseilles. So she took "La Grande Jeanne" into her
+confidence without a scruple. They must have a perfect little dinner, a
+dinner for three such as had never yet been prepared in Mustapha!</p>
+
+<p>She and Jeanne were together for more than an hour. Afterward she went
+out to watch for the steamer from a point of vantage on the Boulevard
+Bleu. Just after one o'clock she saw it gliding toward the harbor over
+the glassy sea. Then she went slowly home in the glaring heat, rested,
+put on a white gown, very simple but quite charming, and a large white
+hat, and went out into the Arab court with a book to await their
+arrival.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past four when a sound struck on her ears, a loud and
+trembling chord, a buzz, the rattle of a "cut-out." The blessed noises
+drew near. They were certainly in the little by-road which led to the
+house. They ceased. She did not move, but sat where she was with a
+fast-beating heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is a cute little snuggery and no mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Crayford's voice in the court of the bougainvillea.</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head and pored over her book. In a moment Alston Lake's
+voice said, in French:</p>
+
+<p>"In the garden! No, don't call her, Bibi, we will find her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look well on the stage that boy!" said Crayford's voice. "No mistake at
+all about its being picturesque over here."</p>
+
+<p>Then the two men came in sight in the sunshine. Instantly Alston said,
+as he took off his Panama hat:</p>
+
+<p>"You got my wire from Marseilles, Mrs. Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I was expecting you! But I didn't know when. Mr. Crayford, how
+kind of you to come over here in September! No one ever does."</p>
+
+<p>She had got up rather languidly and was holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess it's the proper time to come," said Crayford, squeezing her hand
+with his dried-up palm. "See a bit of the real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> thing! I don't believe
+in tourist seasons at all. Tourists always choose the wrong time, seems
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>By the look in his eyes as he glanced around him Charmian saw that he
+was under the spell of Djenan-el-Maqui.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have tea, iced drinks, whatever you like," she said. "I'm all
+alone&mdash;as you see."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" said Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband is away."</p>
+
+<p>Crayford's lips pursed themselves. For a moment he looked like a man who
+finds he has been "had." In that moment Charmian knew that his real
+reason in "running over" to North Africa had certainly been the opera.
+She did not suppose he had acknowledged this to Lake, or ever would
+acknowledge it to anyone. But she was quite certain of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone to England?" asked Crayford, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. He's been working too hard, and run away by himself for a
+little holiday to a place near here, Hammam R'rirha. He'll be sorry to
+miss you. I know how busy you always are, so I suppose you'll only stay
+a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>Crayford's keen eyes suddenly fastened upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I haven't too much time," he remarked drily.</p>
+
+<p>They all sat down, and again Crayford looked around, stretching out his
+short and muscular legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Cute, and no mistake!" he observed, with a sigh, as he pulled at the
+tiny beard. "Think of living here now! Pity I'm not a composer, eh,
+Alston?"</p>
+
+<p>He ended with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"And what's your husband been up to, Mrs. Heath?" he continued, settling
+himself more comfortably in his big chair, and pushing his white Homburg
+hat backward to leave his brown forehead bare to a tiny breeze which
+spoke softly, very gently, of the sea. "You've been over here for a big
+bunch of Sundays, Alston tells me, week-days too."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;" She seemed to be hesitating.</p>
+
+<p>Alston's boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we came here&mdash;we wanted to be quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got out of sight of Broadway, that's certain."</p>
+
+<p>Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> casual matters.
+The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the
+radiant air. And Crayford said:</p>
+
+<p>"It's cute! It's cute!"</p>
+
+<p>He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me years since I've rested like this, Alston!"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh.
+"I've never seen you do it before."</p>
+
+<p>"'Cepting the cure. And that don't amount to anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay and dine, won't you?" said Charmian. "If you're not bored."</p>
+
+<p>"Bored!" said Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll dine just as we are. I'll go in and see the cook about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good of you I'm sure," said Crayford. "But I don't want to put you
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you staying?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Excelsior," said Lake.</p>
+
+<p>"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."</p>
+
+<p>She got up and went slowly into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Stunning figure she's got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following
+her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now
+I'm over here I ought to have a look at what he's up to. She seemed to
+want to avoid the subject, I thought. D'you think he's writing on
+commission? Or perhaps someone's seen the music. The Metropolitan
+crowd&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston
+Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some
+secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario
+bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a
+seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his
+armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he
+was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with.
+That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out
+into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth,
+as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce
+stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward;
+Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity.
+Or perhaps she&mdash;no, she was not conscious of having brought it about
+deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o'clock that night, sitting with
+a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to
+the two men who were smoking near the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked
+up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had
+done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive
+mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The
+opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It
+had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke
+almost with emotion&mdash;a liqueur-glass of excellent old brandy in his
+hand&mdash;of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely
+before the coming generations.</p>
+
+<p>"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and
+bring forward the young. Aren't it, Alston?"</p>
+
+<p>Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in
+combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he
+existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about
+money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston
+also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his
+talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be,
+thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could
+she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner,
+when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were
+centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which
+only comes on a night of nights?</p>
+
+<p>The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or
+did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> betrayed into the
+definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each
+other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was
+able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to
+"come about of itself."</p>
+
+<p>Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of,
+Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and
+applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as
+only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a
+rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
+We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder
+for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's
+agreeable voice.</p>
+
+<p>Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
+The night was so vast, so starry and still, that&mdash;as he afterward said
+to himself&mdash;"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had
+not studied with Madame Th&eacute;nant for nothing. This was an almost supreme
+moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another
+opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame
+Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before
+her. She took her feet off the stool&mdash;she was no odalisque to be
+pampered with footstools and cushions&mdash;and she let herself go.</p>
+
+<p>Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's the best libretto since <i>Carmen</i>, and I know something about
+libretti."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:</p>
+
+<p>"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was
+incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed
+to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and
+yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted
+him&mdash;"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from
+wherever he is?"</p>
+
+<p>With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But&mdash;but I think he needs the holiday he
+is taking badly."</p>
+
+<p>"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't
+it, Alston?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was
+dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom
+forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I might. But&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then?"</p>
+
+<p>"The only thing is he needs complete rest."</p>
+
+<p>"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the
+resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it
+comes straight from me."</p>
+
+<p>He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar
+he had enjoyed that night.</p>
+
+<p>"We've no room for resters in New York City."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New
+York City."</p>
+
+<p>As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long
+drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of
+the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly.
+Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"</p>
+
+<p>When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till
+silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!</p>
+
+<p>And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she
+would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her
+lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a
+"rester." She would not surely "get left."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late.
+Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. <i>Bonne nuit.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bonne nuit, madame.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>On the following day she received a note from Alston.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Charmian</span>,&mdash;You are a wonder. No one on earth
+could have managed him better. You might have known him from the
+cradle&mdash;yours, of course, not his! I'm taking him around to-day. He
+wants to go to Djenan-el-Maqui, I can see that. But I'm keeping him
+off it. Lie low and mum's the word as to Claude.&mdash;Your fellow
+conspirator,</p>
+
+<p class='author'>"<span class="smcap">Alston</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day
+alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted,
+presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out
+afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved
+attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion
+of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for
+Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of
+herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be
+produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she
+strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had
+the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long
+had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian
+could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone
+with Claude. Now they were a <i>m&eacute;nage &agrave; trois</i>. She recalled the
+beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable
+they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The
+river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.</p>
+
+<p>Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a
+thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such
+a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her
+strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If
+only Alston would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She
+looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin
+gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She
+listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African
+nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no
+sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her
+long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her
+movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her
+small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry.
+Her nose was twitching.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>She lifted the dog on to her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Caroline barked faintly again.</p>
+
+<p>"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."</p>
+
+<p>Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down
+with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm
+barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great
+animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased,
+and in a moment a voice called:</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian! Where are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had
+spoken the name to herself, for herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm out here on the terrace!"</p>
+
+<p>She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come
+when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by
+telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to
+tell him.</p>
+
+<p>He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you surprised?"</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Very! Very surprised!"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only
+decided to-day, quite suddenly."</p>
+
+<p>"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I
+was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for
+to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the
+opera."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."</p>
+
+<p>She wondered why, but she did not say so.</p>
+
+<p>"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt&mdash;it seemed so absurd my
+rushing back like this."</p>
+
+<p>He ended with a little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you think is here?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Here?"</p>
+
+<p>He glanced round.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean in Algiers."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with searching eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Someone we know well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two people."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;guess!"</p>
+
+<p>"Women? Men?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men."</p>
+
+<p>"Sennier?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Max Elliot?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. One is&mdash;Alston Lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has brought someone with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jacob Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's taking a holiday motoring."</p>
+
+<p>"But to come to Algiers in summer!"</p>
+
+<p>"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past mid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>night. He wants
+to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."</p>
+
+<p>"Wants to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and
+Alston."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face
+clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you sound as if you minded."</p>
+
+<p>"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said, 'It's the best libretto since <i>Carmen</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a good libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"He was enthusiastic. Claude"&mdash;she put her hand on his arm&mdash;"he wants to
+hear your music."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he said so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when
+he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he
+suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."</p>
+
+<p>"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."</p>
+
+<p>"It almost seems&mdash;" She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had
+felt you ought to be here."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you glad?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise
+for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have never even thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and
+wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not
+be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he
+would take it it would be too splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"He never will."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed,
+almost angrily.</p>
+
+<p>She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin
+their prospects.</p>
+
+<p>"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a
+little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She pulled herself up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much,
+and then you speak like this."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this
+breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I
+don't know why."</p>
+
+<p>But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition
+was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something,
+was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she
+had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget
+Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have
+pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."</p>
+
+<p>Claude put his arm round her gently.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very
+aggravating," he said. "But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, said nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed&mdash;"your own child. Then
+others will believe in it, too. Alston does."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And Jacob Crayford shall."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she added:</p>
+
+<p>"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>But she only answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"</p>
+
+<p>Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow
+linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver
+cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into
+the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"Yaw."</p>
+
+<p>Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge
+Havana.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up.
+"Of course she telegraphed him to come."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down and crossed his legs.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But even you can't see what isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at
+Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the
+big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well,
+that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent
+little thing, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his
+life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to
+Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to
+hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to
+get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it.
+See?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very
+apparent.</p>
+
+<p>"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business.
+You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car
+to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can
+tell her a good bit depends on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same
+half-humorous dryness.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?"
+said Alston, with bland formality.</p>
+
+<p>"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."</p>
+
+<p>At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to
+distort slightly one corner of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She
+was in a state of great excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it
+comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in
+such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel
+almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be
+guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him?
+Just think of those two shut in together!"</p>
+
+<p>As Alston got into the car she repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Allez au Diable!</i>" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a
+Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bien, m'sieu!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours
+to get there."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tr&egrave;s bien, m'sieu.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off.
+"Knows how to time things!"</p>
+
+<p>It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Better dine with me."</p>
+
+<p>She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."</p>
+
+<p>"But what will people think?"</p>
+
+<p>"What they always do, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but what's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've wondered for years!"</p>
+
+<p>He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on
+returning home.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you may."</p>
+
+<p>As they drove off she exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do
+you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."</p>
+
+<p>"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he doesn't stop his?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel
+so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same
+on mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but we meet everything on the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us
+on any side."</p>
+
+<p>Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.</p>
+
+<p>They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the
+Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."</p>
+
+<p>"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a
+violent push in the small of his back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Stop! Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>He pulled up the horses with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" said Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>He took off his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by
+the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big
+cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you dined?" said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you&mdash;" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the
+opera all this time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yaw."</p>
+
+<p>He blew out a smoke ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Hearing it and talking things over."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you&mdash;then I suppose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full
+as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will
+tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'm almost there."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All
+the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of
+times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was
+now burning with impatience to be with Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses
+moved forward.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that
+quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."</p>
+
+<p>He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did
+not attempt to make him talk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little
+dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning
+her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at
+the cold chicken he was eating.</p>
+
+<p>"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"</p>
+
+<p>She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the
+dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which
+he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"Is anything the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean,
+of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've
+composed, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say? What did he think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I suppose we did."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"All sorts of things."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he liked some of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Only some?"</p>
+
+<p>"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of
+alterations."</p>
+
+<p>"Where? Which part?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have to show you."</p>
+
+<p>"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can
+easily do that without showing me to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy
+enough. You could do that in a day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you think one has only to sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when
+you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And
+if you do what he says, what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"How d'you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't commit himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered
+something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."</p>
+
+<p>"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great
+opportunities for new scenic effects."</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he
+would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"</p>
+
+<p>She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been
+working for, waiting&mdash;longing for, for months and years! Caroline!
+Caroline!"</p>
+
+<p>Caroline hastily indicated her presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces!
+There! And the sugary part, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll make her ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think,
+you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet
+I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it
+would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deny it. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away
+your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's
+pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others
+shall know too. The whole world shall know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a
+sobriety that almost made her despair:</p>
+
+<p>"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be
+able to consent to make changes in the opera."</p>
+
+<p>Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath
+on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other.
+It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last
+stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much
+alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with
+a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his
+success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his
+work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of
+his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever
+does, about the heels of tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and
+before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States,
+and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one
+circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other
+delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music
+halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in
+halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first
+men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile
+with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath
+the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had
+been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that
+had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And
+this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling
+its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the
+inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always
+wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class
+artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of
+New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."</p>
+
+<p>Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> fine theater on
+Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in
+productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the
+staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and
+had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in
+the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of
+dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was
+prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last.
+He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a
+profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever.
+Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned
+a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he
+would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less
+than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often
+carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win
+out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him
+inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises
+as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often
+led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity.
+He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood,"
+and was for ever on the look-out for it.</p>
+
+<p>He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.</p>
+
+<p>But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a
+long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names
+he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But
+people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not
+touch them.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was
+passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his
+side because of gratitude, and in expectation.</p>
+
+<p>The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was
+absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his
+ideas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's
+to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the
+conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if
+the darned thing's a failure."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside,
+the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered
+with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue
+could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the
+calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly,
+unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little
+rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him,
+bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences
+it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And
+from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in
+concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips
+to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes
+travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if we&mdash;I mean if my husband does what you wish, you <i>will</i> spend
+thousands over it?" she said, "you <i>will</i> produce it, give it its
+chance?"</p>
+
+<p>Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything
+definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time
+over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But
+he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which
+could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole
+affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude
+dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face
+of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt
+that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a
+successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the
+face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate
+for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within
+him. He strove to summon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> up that strength, but a sense of pity, that
+perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent.
+Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not
+strike it down into the dust of despair.</p>
+
+<p>Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that
+was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth,
+looked at Charmian, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yah!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.
+But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back,
+beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going
+to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the
+only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and
+bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever
+trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get
+down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or
+not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.
+I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your
+getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and
+your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you
+write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.
+You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the
+best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start,
+but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you
+to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though
+you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the
+center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of
+feet above it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" breathed Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he
+twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably
+thought Napoleonic.</p>
+
+<p>"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> aiming above it, and
+my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"&mdash;his tone was
+changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost
+paternal&mdash;"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big
+success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger&mdash;eh, little
+lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.</p>
+
+<p>His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of
+the room, out of the villa, to rush away&mdash;away into some desert place,
+and to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help&mdash;how would you have me look?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie, we all only want&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know!"</p>
+
+<p>He clenched his wet hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what
+we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in
+this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell&mdash;don't mind me, little
+lady! I'll stop right there!&mdash;we're getting on to something that's going
+to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about&mdash;'s going to
+astonish&mdash;the&mdash;world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"</p>
+
+<p>And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made
+no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather
+feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the
+tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were
+moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when
+the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it
+glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this
+opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own
+consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his
+own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be
+really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he
+had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that
+narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly
+what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all
+his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm&mdash;a genuine
+enthusiasm&mdash;of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be
+carried on by their hopes.</p>
+
+<p>As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where
+Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every
+day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and
+business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude
+had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre
+eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The
+more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and
+interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out
+and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or
+"that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"&mdash;thought of by himself&mdash;"makes
+your opera a different thing."</p>
+
+<p>And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he
+would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it
+off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he
+reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded
+came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young
+people.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got
+hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and
+I'll make him another Battistini. See here"&mdash;and he turned sharply to
+Claude&mdash;"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could
+easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why,
+it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I
+wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes
+first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But
+the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the
+opera."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude
+rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he,
+the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of
+form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite
+shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all.
+But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as
+strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.</p>
+
+<p>Claude was tempted to reply:</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."</p>
+
+<p>But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with
+Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He
+admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities,
+which delighted her.</p>
+
+<p>"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never
+met an Englishwoman like her!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man,
+recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated
+before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She
+felt almost as if she were a creator.</p>
+
+<p>"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."</p>
+
+<p>While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised
+by Crayford&mdash;and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of
+those about him, scourged to his work by their desires&mdash;Lake studied the
+baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian
+"put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."</p>
+
+<p>"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I
+can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he
+answered. "Now, see here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They plunged deep into the libretto.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the
+opera.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs.
+I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."</p>
+
+<p>That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian
+went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of
+odd people.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.</p>
+
+<p>And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls.
+They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other
+nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to
+New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who
+had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the
+spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude"&mdash;the composer was Claude to him now&mdash;"can write in something
+weird to go with it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And Charmian of course agreed.</p>
+
+<p>It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era
+Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully
+all the changes which Crayford demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when
+I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to
+think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the
+changes. I can see that."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the
+chance you are offering him."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>"He realizes it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't tell a soul."</p>
+
+<p>"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude
+against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> do it if it wasn't for
+the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's
+going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is
+expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"&mdash;Charmian
+thrilled at that word&mdash;"just about the same time, a day or two before,
+or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or
+the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been
+seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what
+opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to
+run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night
+stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till
+every note in his score's in its place."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."</p>
+
+<p>"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from
+what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the
+writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a
+scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed
+everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,'
+I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have
+to bring him over."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like
+old bones."</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a
+grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it
+if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it,
+though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's
+a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must
+be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<p>On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just
+finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the
+small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room
+on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.</p>
+
+<p>"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window,
+Claudie."</p>
+
+<p>"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke almost irritably, like a man whose nerves were tired. But
+Charmian did not seem to notice it. She looked bright, resolute,
+dominant, as she replied in her clear voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Let it come in. I like to hear it. It is the voice of the world we are
+here to conquer. Don't look at me like that, dear old boy, but open the
+window. The air will do you good. You're tired. I shouldn't have allowed
+you to work during the voyage."</p>
+
+<p>"I had to work."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, very soon you'll be able to rest, and on laurels."</p>
+
+<p>Claude went to open the big window, pulling aside the blind, while
+Charmian lighted a cigarette, and curled herself up on the padded sofa.
+And as, in a moment, the roar of the gigantic city swelled in a fierce
+crescendo, she leaned forward with the cigarette in her hand, listening
+intently, half smiling, with an eager light in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What a city it is!" she said, as Claude turned and came toward her. "It
+makes London seem almost like a village. I'm glad it is here the opera
+is to be given for the first time."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I," he said, sitting down.</p>
+
+<p>But he spoke almost gloomily, looking at the floor. His face was white
+and too expressive, and his left hand, as it hung down between his
+knees, fluttered. He lifted it, turning the fingers inward.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why?" Charmian said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I&mdash;they are all strangers here."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing, and just then the telephone bell sounded. Mr. Alston
+Lake was below asking if Mr. Heath was in.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and
+vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost
+greedily, of expectation and virile optimism.</p>
+
+<p>"My!" he said, as he shook them both by the hand. "You look settled in
+for the night."</p>
+
+<p>"So we are," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Alston laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to take you to the theater."</p>
+
+<p>"But they're not rehearsing to-night," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but Crayford's trying effects."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crayford! Is he back from Philadelphia?" exclaimed Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Been back an hour and hard at work already. He sent me to fetch you.
+They're all up on the stage trying to get the locust effect."</p>
+
+<p>"The locusts! Wait a minute, Alston! I'll change my gown."</p>
+
+<p>She hurried out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old chap, what's up? You don't look too pleased," said Alston to
+Claude as the door shut. "Don't you want to come out? But we must put
+our backs into this, you know. The fight's on, and a bully big fight it
+is. Seen the papers to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I haven't had a minute. I've been going through the orchestration
+with Meroni."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was very nice," answered Claude evasively. "But what's in the
+papers?"</p>
+
+<p>"A bit of news that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The
+Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new
+opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be
+ready by the first of March."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I like that! It takes all the wind out of our sails. In a big
+race the getting off is half the battle. We were coming first. But if I
+know anything of Crayford we shall come first even now. It's all Madame
+Sennier. She's mad against Crayford and the opera and you, and she's
+specially mad against Mrs. Charmian. The papers to-night are full of a
+lot of nonsense about the libretto."</p>
+
+<p>"Which libretto?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yours. Apparently Madame Sennier's been saying it was really written
+for Sennier and had been promised to him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is. But she's spread herself on it finely, I can tell you.
+Crayford's simply delighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted, when I'm accused of mean conduct, of stealing another man's
+property."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use getting furious over our papers! Doesn't pay! Besides, it
+makes a story, works up public interest. Still, I think she might have
+kept out Mrs. Charmian's name."</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian is in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a lot of rubbish about her hearing what a stunner the libretto
+was, and rushing over to Paris to bribe it away before Sennier had
+considered it in its finished state."</p>
+
+<p>"How abominable! I shall&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but I wouldn't. Crayford says it will give value to the
+libretto, prepare the public mind for a masterpiece, and help to carry
+your music to success."</p>
+
+<p>"I see! With this and the locusts!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned away toward the open window, through which came the incessant
+roar of traffic, the sound of motor horns, and now, for a moment, a
+chiming of bells from St. Patrick's Cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we must do all we know. We mustn't give away a single chance. The
+whole Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up
+the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than
+any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a
+deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a
+crowd of pressmen around at the theater about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> it to-night, you can bet.
+Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or Crayford'll be
+raging."</p>
+
+<p>Claude stood still for an instant, looking from Alston to Charmian, who
+walked in briskly, wearing a sealskin coat that reached to her heels,
+and buttoning long white gloves. Then he said, "I won't be a minute!"
+and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>As he disappeared Charmian and Alston looked after him. Then Alston came
+nearer to her, and they began to talk in rather low voices.</p>
+
+<p>"The fight is on!"</p>
+
+<p>How Claude hated those words; how he hated the truth which they
+expressed! To-night, in New York, as he went to fetch his overcoat from
+the smart and brilliantly lit bedroom which was opposite to the
+sitting-room across a lobby, he wondered why Fate had led him into this
+situation, why he had been doomed to become a sort of miserable center
+of intrigue, recrimination, discussion, praise, blame, dissension. No
+man, surely, on the face of the earth had loved tranquillity more than
+he had. Few men had more surely possessed it. He had known his soul and
+he had been its faithful guardian once&mdash;but long ago, surely centuries
+ago! That he should be the cause of battle, what an irony!</p>
+
+<p>Thinking with great rapidity, during this brief interval of loneliness,
+while he got ready to go out, a rapidity to which his fatigue seemed to
+contribute, giving it wings, Claude reviewed his life since the first
+evening at Elliot's house. Events and periods and details flashed by;
+his close friendship with Mrs. Mansfield (who had refused to come to
+America), his almost inimical acquaintance with Charmian, Mrs.
+Shiffney's capricious endeavors to get hold of him, the firmness of his
+refusals, the voyage to Algiers, his regret at missing the wonders of
+Africa, Charmian's return full of a knowledge he lacked, the dinner
+during which he had looked at her with new eyes.</p>
+
+<p>(He took down from its hook his heavy fur coat bought for the bitter
+winter of New York.)</p>
+
+<p>Chateaubriand's description of Napoleon, the little island in Mrs.
+Grahame's garden, the production of Jacques Sennier's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> opera&mdash;they were
+all linked together closely at this moment in a tenacious mind; with the
+expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by
+night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table,
+the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in
+the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying
+of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the
+earth as the dawn near drew.</p>
+
+<p>Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him
+through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what
+was he hastening?</p>
+
+<p>His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids
+whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of
+the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place,
+Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been
+the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his
+abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of
+his own knowledge of himself.</p>
+
+<p>He saw a gulf black beneath him.</p>
+
+<p>But Charmian called:</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, do make haste!"</p>
+
+<p>He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he
+went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his
+short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter
+dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters,
+its towers&mdash;as they had seemed to him then&mdash;climbing into Heaven, its
+voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and
+photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes,
+searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's
+small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers,
+conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene
+painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across
+Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by
+grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the
+huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he&mdash;he of
+all men!&mdash;was expected to fill,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> a maw gaping for human beings, gaping
+for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the
+first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic
+cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially
+realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles
+of its influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may
+feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over,
+leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into
+the dust.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a time you've been! We&mdash;are you very tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit. Come along!"</p>
+
+<p>They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift,
+shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a
+taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while
+Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I represent&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and
+rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left
+where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park
+showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed
+the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty
+air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending
+procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers,
+gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The
+pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and
+walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as
+the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking
+pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat.
+She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In
+an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his
+ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>citement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and
+her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the
+world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear
+what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the
+lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate
+world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange
+emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination,
+those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely
+evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like
+the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had
+kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated
+from him, as if they thought him a stern, or neglectful father! He shut
+his eyes, and seemed to see once more the smile of the goblin woman, and
+then the fiery gaze of Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"How could she say it? But I don't know that I mind!"</p>
+
+<p>"Minding things doesn't help any in a place like New York."</p>
+
+<p>"But will they believe it?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they do half of them will think you worth while."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the other half?"</p>
+
+<p>"As long as you get there it's all right."</p>
+
+<p>The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.</p>
+
+<p>As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for
+information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear
+them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had
+deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the
+pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and
+envied Alston.</p>
+
+<p>From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came
+carrying some letters.</p>
+
+<p>"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix
+them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing
+like that in the Sennier opera."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by
+the shoulders and say to him:</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only
+nodded and remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"All the better for us!"</p>
+
+<p>Then hastily he opened his letters. Three were from autograph hunters,
+and he thrust them into the pocket of his coat. The fourth was from
+Armand Gillier. When Claude saw the name of his collaborator he stood
+still and read the note frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"Letters! Always letters!" said Charmian, coming up. "Anything
+interesting, Claudie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gillier is coming out after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Armand Gillier!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Or&mdash;he arrived to-day, I expect, though this was posted in France.
+What day does the <i>Philadelphia</i>&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"This morning," said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he's here."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>"It's bad taste on his part. After his horrible efforts to ruin the
+opera he ought to have kept away."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be interviewed on the libretto," said Alston. "Gee knows what
+he'll say, the beast!"</p>
+
+<p>"If he backs up Madame Sennier in her libelous remarks it will be
+proclaiming that he can be bribed," exclaimed Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he's bound to throw in his lot with us," added Alston, as
+they came into the huge curving corridor which ran behind the ground
+tier boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"How dark it is! Claudie, give me your hand. It slopes, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The entrance is just here."</p>
+
+<p>"How hot your hand is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are!" said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed a swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly
+lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The
+hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the
+darkness. It was a vast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> house, and the faint light and the emptiness of
+it made it look even vaster than it was.</p>
+
+<p>"The maw, and I am to fill it!" Claude thought again. And he was
+conscious of unimportance. He even felt as if he had never composed any
+music, as if he knew nothing about composition, had no talent at all. It
+seemed to him incredible that, because of him, of what he had done,
+great sums of money were being spent, small armies of people were at
+work, columns upon columns were being written in myriads of newspapers,
+a man such as Crayford was putting forth all his influence, lavishing
+all his powers of showman, impresario, man of taste, fighting man. He
+remembered the night when Sennier's opera was produced, and it seemed to
+him impossible that such a night could ever come to him, be his night.
+He thought of it somewhat as a man thinks of Death, as his neighbor's
+visitant not as his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Chaw-<i>lee</i>!" shouted an imperative voice. "Chaw-ley! Chaw-<i>lee</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried a thin voice from somewhere behind the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"Get down that light! Give us your ambers! No, not the blues! Your
+ambers! Where's Jimber? I say, where is Jimber?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mulworth, the stage producer, who was the speaker, appeared running
+sidewise down an uncovered avenue between two rows of stalls close to
+the stage. Although a large man, he proceeded with remarkable rapidity.
+Emerging into the open he came upon Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Crayford is here. He wants very much to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere behind. I think he's viewing camels. Can you come with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!"</p>
+
+<p>He went off quickly with Mr. Mulworth, who shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, where is Jimber?" to some unknown personality as he ran toward a
+door which gave on to the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go and sit down at the back of the stalls, Alston," said
+Charmian. "They don't seem to be trying the locusts yet."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No. There are always delays. The patience one needs in a theater! Talk
+of self-control! Here, I'll pull away the&mdash;or shall we go to that box?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I'll get on this chair. Help me! That's it."</p>
+
+<p>They sat down in a dark box at the back of the stalls. Far off, across a
+huge space, they saw the immense stage, lit up now by an amber glow
+which came not from the footlights but from above. The stage was set
+with a scene representing an oasis in the desert with yellow sand in the
+distance. Among some tufted palms stood three or four stage hands, pale,
+dusty, in shirt sleeves. At the extreme back of the scene, against the
+horizon, Mr. Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very
+bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards
+behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream
+of amber light.</p>
+
+<p>"It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian.
+"They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a
+success?"</p>
+
+<p>"What! You beginning to doubt!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. But when I see this huge dark theater I can't help thinking,
+'Shall we fill it?' What a fight art is! I never realized till now that
+we are on a battlefield. Alston, I feel I would almost rather die than
+fail."</p>
+
+<p>"Fail! But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Or quite rather die."</p>
+
+<p>"In any case it couldn't be your failure."</p>
+
+<p>She turned and looked at him in the heavy dimness.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't write the libretto. You didn't compose the music."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," she said, in a low tense voice, "it would be my failure if
+the opera failed, because but for me it never would have been written,
+never have been produced out here. Alston, it's a great responsibility.
+And I never really understood how great till I saw Claude go across the
+stage just now. He looked so&mdash;he looked&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is it, Mrs. Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"He looked like a victim, I thought."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Everyone does in that light unless&mdash;there's Crayford!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Mr. Crayford came upon the stage from the side on which
+Claude had just vanished. He had a soft hat on the back of his head, and
+a cigar in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't!" whispered Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Now go ahead!" roared Crayford. "Work your motors and let's see!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound like a rushing mighty wind.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock in the morning Crayford was still smoking, still
+watching, still shouting. Charmian and Alston were still in the darkness
+of the box, gazing, listening, sometimes talking. They had not seen
+Claude again. If he came into the front of the theater they meant to
+call him. But he did not come. The hours had flown, and now, when Alston
+looked at his watch and told Charmian the time, she could scarcely
+believe him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can Claude be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Jimber!" roared Mr. Crayford. "Where is Jimber?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mulworth, who looked now as if he had lain awake in his clothes for
+more nights than he cared to remember, rushed upon the stage almost
+fanatically.</p>
+
+<p>"The locusts are all in one corner!" shouted Crayford. "What's the use
+of that? They must spread."</p>
+
+<p>"Spread your locusts!" bawled Mr. Mulworth.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted both his arms in a semaphore movement, which he continued
+until it seemed as if his physical mechanism had escaped from the
+control of his brain.</p>
+
+<p>"Spread your locusts, Jimber!" he wailed. "Spread! Spread! I tell
+you&mdash;spread your locusts!"</p>
+
+<p>He vanished, always moving his arms. His voice died away in the further
+regions.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was alone. She had nodded in reply to Alston's remark. To-night
+she felt rather anxious about Claude. She could not entirely rid her
+mind of the remembrance of him crossing under the light, looking
+unnatural, ghastly, like a persecuted man. And now that she was alone
+she felt as if she were haunted. Eager to be reassured, she fixed her
+eyes on the keen figure, the resolute face, of Mr. Crayford.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> The power
+of work in Americans was almost astounding, she thought. All the men
+with whom she and Claude had had anything to do seemed to be working all
+the time, unresting as waves driven by a determined wind. Keenness! That
+was the characteristic of this marvellous city, this marvellous land.
+And it had acted upon her almost like electricity. She had felt charged
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>It would be terrible to fail before a nation that worshipped success,
+that looked for it with resolute piercing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And she recalled her arrival with Claude in the cold light of early
+morning, her first sensation of enchantment when a pressman, with
+searching eyes and a firm mouth turned down at the corners, had come up
+to interview her. At that moment she had felt that she was leaving the
+dulness of the unknown life behind her for ever. It was no doubt a
+terribly vulgar feeling. She had been uneasily conscious of that. But,
+nevertheless, it had grown within her, fostered by events. For
+Crayford's publicity agent had been masterly in his efforts. Charmian
+and Claude had been snapshotted on the deck of the ship by a little army
+of journalists. They had been snapshotted again on the gangplank. In the
+docks they had been interviewed by more than a dozen people. A little
+later, in the afternoon of the same day, they had held a reception of
+pressmen in their sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel. Charmian thought
+of these men now as she waited for Alston's return.</p>
+
+<p>They had been introduced by Mr. Cane, Crayford's publicity agent, and
+had arrived about three o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they
+were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had
+all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had
+put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested,
+sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the
+opera. His song, <i>Wild Heart of Youth</i>, had been touched upon, and a
+tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told Charmian
+that he loved it. Then they had discussed music. Claude at first had
+seemed uncomfortable, almost too modest, Charmian had thought. But the
+pressmen had been so agreeable, so unself-conscious, that his discomfort
+had worn off. His natural inclination to please,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> to give people what
+they seemed to expect of him, had come to his rescue. He had been
+vivacious and even charming. But when the pressmen had gone he had said
+to Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"Pleasant fellows, weren't they? But their eyes ask one for success.
+Till the opera is out I shall see those eyes, asking, always asking!"</p>
+
+<p>And he had gone out of the room with a gesture suggestive of anxiety,
+almost of fear.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian saw those eyes now as she sat in the box. What Claude had said
+was true. Beneath the sympathy, the charm, the frankness, the readiness
+in welcome of these Americans, there was a silent and strong demand&mdash;the
+demand of a powerful, vital country.</p>
+
+<p>"We are here to make you known over immense distances to thousands of
+people!" the eyes of the pressmen had seemed to say. "But&mdash;produce the
+goods!" In other words, "Be a success!"</p>
+
+<p>"Be a success! Be a success!" It seemed to Charmian as if all America
+were saying that in her ears unceasingly. "We will be kind to you. We
+will shower good-will upon you. We have hospitable hands, keen brains,
+warm hearts at your service. We only ask to give of our best to you.
+But&mdash;be a success! Be a success!"</p>
+
+<p>And the voice grew so strong that at last it seemed almost stern, almost
+fierce in her ears. At last it seemed as if peril would attend upon
+non-compliance with its demand.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of Claude crossing the stage under the amber light, she
+looked into the vast dim theater with its thousands of empty seats, and
+excitement and fear burned in her, mingled together. Then something
+determined in her, the thing perhaps which had enabled her to take
+Claude for her husband, and later to play a part in his art life, rose
+up and drove out the fear. "It is fear which saps the will, fear which
+disintegrates, fear which calls to failure." She was able to say that to
+herself and to cast fear away. And her mind repeated the words she had
+often heard Crayford utter, "It's up to us now to bring the thing off
+and we've just got to bring it off!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I tell you! They're too much on one side of the scene still!
+Who in thunder ever saw locusts swarming in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> corner when they've got
+the whole desert to spread themselves in? It aren't their nature. What?
+Well, then, you must alter the position of your motors. Where is
+Jimber?"</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Crayford strode behind the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>Half-past two in the morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston
+never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She
+buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no
+one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever
+imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like
+desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring
+rather vaguely at the palms and the yellow sands.</p>
+
+<p>After she had sat thus for perhaps some five minutes she saw Claude walk
+hastily on to the stage. He had a large black note-book and a pencil in
+his hand, and seemed in search of someone. Crayford came on brusquely
+from the opposite side of the scene and met him. They began to confer
+together.</p>
+
+<p>The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."</p>
+
+<p>"What has he been doing all this time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be
+first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the
+run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's
+out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary
+heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't like to leave Claude."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he
+can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she
+got up to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted
+everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a
+monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's
+pulling her part to pieces now."</p>
+
+<p>"How did Claude take it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home
+without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the
+end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll send us away."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.</p>
+
+<p>The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford,
+Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the
+stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the
+taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the
+cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel
+Claude asked him to come in.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go to bed," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the
+question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar,
+and try to quiet down."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."</p>
+
+<p>At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly,
+intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly
+vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were
+dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I
+think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"</p>
+
+<p>He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of
+champagne, he added:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, let us make a bargain!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, old chap?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let us&mdash;just us three&mdash;have supper together after the first
+performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of
+semi-strangers."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come! Drink to that night!"</p>
+
+<p>They drank.</p>
+
+<p>Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> Words rushed to the
+lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled
+under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them
+the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put
+questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the
+libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had
+made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a
+bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was
+to sing the big r&ocirc;le in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as
+an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the
+libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set
+it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful
+temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to
+capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no
+doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers.
+The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to
+muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame
+Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false
+move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.</p>
+
+<p>As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with
+excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before,
+invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when
+he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether
+he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair
+had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had
+seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all
+subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt"
+was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say
+so to Claude. There had been an argument&mdash;the theater is the Temple of
+Argument&mdash;and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck
+to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now,
+as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did
+it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> deadly sin, were imputed to
+him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his
+brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic?
+What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a
+poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added
+to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it&mdash;so long as it was
+a success? The blatant thing&mdash;everyone, every circumstance, was urging
+Claude to snatch at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning,
+excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on
+his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and
+crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the
+popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of
+sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to
+be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like
+the clashing of brass instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear
+them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.</p>
+
+<p>One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been
+interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his
+work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct
+statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however,
+had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto,
+which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to
+music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the
+management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally
+remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is
+that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery,
+acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or
+anyone else, says to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself
+up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh
+cigar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big,
+resounding success?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half
+congratulatory.</p>
+
+<p>"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of
+success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the
+breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to
+get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've
+simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from
+Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it.
+That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at
+first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep
+himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got
+anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what
+people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses
+of advertisement which has quite enlightened me."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?" interjected Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let
+them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last
+nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not
+at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys,
+mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up
+to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all
+to&mdash;keep my name before the public."'"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to
+look grave and excited.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the
+man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must
+be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever
+they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and
+sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told
+me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our
+combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new
+libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been
+trying to re-write<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got
+nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did
+work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed
+in the opera, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And
+he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music&mdash;and he's a man who
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we
+bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather! The coming baritone!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a change!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes shone with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to be almost afraid of celebrity, I think. But now I want it, I
+need it. America has made me need it."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the country that wakes people up," said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"It drives me almost mad!" cried Claude, with sudden violence.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie!" exclaimed Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"It does! There's something here that pumps nervous energy into one
+until one's body and mind seem to be swirling in a mill race. When I
+think of my life in Mullion House and my life here!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian, with a quick movement, sat upright on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do realize&mdash;" she began, almost excitedly. She paused, gazing
+at Claude.</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Claude said at length, as she remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You do realize that I did see something for you that you hadn't seen
+for yourself, when you shut yourself and your talent in, when you
+wouldn't look at, wouldn't touch the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I hadn't courage then. I dreaded contact with life. Now I
+defy life to get the better of me. I know it, and I'm beginning to know
+how to deal with it. I say, let us plan out our campaign if Madame
+Sennier persists in her accusations."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down between them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But first tell us exactly what you gave out to the pressmen to-night,"
+said Alston.</p>
+
+<p>They talked till the dawn crept along the sky.</p>
+
+<p>When at last Alston got up to go, Claude said:</p>
+
+<p>"If three strong wills are worth anything we must succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"And we've got Crayford's back of ours," said Alston, putting his arms
+behind him into the sleeves of his coat. "Good-morning! I'm really
+going."</p>
+
+<p>And he went.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian had got up from her sofa, and was standing by the
+writing-table, which was in an angle of the room on the right of the
+window. As Alston went out, her eyes fell on an envelope lying by itself
+a little apart from the letters with which the table was strewn.
+Scarcely thinking about what she was doing she stretched out her hand.
+Her intention was to put the envelope with its fellows. But when she
+took it up she saw that it had not been opened and contained a letter,
+or note, addressed to Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, here's a letter for you, Claudie!" she said, giving it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there? Another autograph hunter, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>Without glancing at the writing he tore the envelope, took out a letter,
+and began to read it.</p>
+
+<p>"It's from Mrs. Shiffney!" he said. "She arrived to-day on the same ship
+as Gillier."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew she would come!" cried Charmian. "Though they all pretended she
+was going to winter at Cap Martin."</p>
+
+<p>"And she's brought Susan Fleet with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Susan!"</p>
+
+<p>"But read what she says. It seems to have all been quite unexpected, a
+sudden caprice."</p>
+
+<p>"You poor thing!" said Charmian, looking at him with pitiful eyes. "When
+will you begin to understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Us."</p>
+
+<p>Claude sent a glance so keen that it was almost like a dart at Charmian.
+But she did not see it for she was reading the letter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class='author'>
+"<span class="smcap">The Ritz-Carlton Hotel</span>,<br />
+<i>Friday.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Heath</span>,&mdash;I've just arrived with Susan Fleet on
+the <i>Philadelphia</i>. I heard such reports of the excitement over
+your opera out here that I suddenly felt I must run over. After all
+you told me about it at Constantine I'm naturally interested. Do be
+nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions
+of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm
+really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room
+for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is.
+Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your
+libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such
+rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you
+both lunch with us at Sherry's to-morrow at one o'clock? Love to
+Charmian.&mdash;Yours very sincerely,</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+<span class="smcap">Adelaide Shiffney</span>."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Claude, as Charmian sat without speaking, after she had
+finished the letter. "Shall we go to Sherry's to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke as if he were testing her, but she did not seem to notice it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Claudie, I think we will."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you thinking?" she asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still believe Mrs. Shiffney tricked me at Constantine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know she did."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"We are in the arena!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"If we go to Sherry's, and Mrs. Shiffney speaks about coming to a
+rehearsal, what do you mean to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she only wants to come in the hope of being able to carry a
+bad report to the Senniers."</p>
+
+<p>Claude was silent for a moment. Then he said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That may be. But&mdash;we are in the arena."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You dislike Mrs. Shiffney, you distrust her, but you do think she has
+taste, judgment, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;some."</p>
+
+<p>"A great deal?"</p>
+
+<p>"When she isn't biased by personal feeling. But she is biased against
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Claude's eyes had become piercing.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," he said, "that if I were with Mrs. Shiffney at a rehearsal I
+should divine her real, her honest opinion, the opinion one has of a
+thing whether one wishes to have it or not. If <i>she</i> were to admire the
+opera&mdash;" He paused. His face looked self-conscious.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only mean that I think it might be the verdict in advance."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," she said slowly. "Yes, I see."</p>
+
+<p>She got up.</p>
+
+<p>"We simply must go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Come along then. But I feel as if I should never want to sleep again."</p>
+
+<p>"We must sleep. The verdict in advance&mdash;yes, I see. But Adelaide might
+make a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"She really has a flair."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. Oh, Claudie, the verdict!"</p>
+
+<p>They were now in their bedroom. Charmian sighed and put her arms round
+his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"The verdict!" she breathed against his cheek softly.</p>
+
+<p>He felt moisture on his cheek. She had pressed wet eyes against it.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian, what is it? Why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Just put your arms round me for a minute&mdash;yes, like that!
+Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win. Oh, not altogether
+selfishly! I&mdash;I am an egoist, I suppose. I do care for my husband to be
+a success. But there's more than that. Yes, yes, there is!"</p>
+
+<p>She held him, with passion, and suddenly kissed his eyes. She was crying
+quite openly now, but not unhappily.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="CLAUDIE" id="CLAUDIE"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter">
+             <img   src="images/img04.jpg"
+             alt="CLAUDIE" /><br />
+         <b>"'CLAUDIE, I WANT YOU TO WIN,<br />I WANT YOU TO WIN!'"&mdash;<a href='#Page_378'><i>Page 378</i></a></b>
+    </div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's something in you far, far down, that I love," she whispered. "I
+am not always conscious of it, but I am now. It called me to you, I
+believe, at the very first. And I want that to win, I want that to win!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude's face had become set. He bent over Charmian. For a moment he was
+on the verge of a strange confession. But something that still had great
+power held him back from it. And he only said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have worked hard for me. If we do win it will be your victory."</p>
+
+<p>"And if we lose?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian&mdash;" he kissed her. "We must try to sleep."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>On a night of unnatural excitement Claude had come to a crude
+resolution. He kept to it, at first only by a strong effort, during the
+days and the nights which followed, calling upon his will with a
+recklessness he had never known before, a recklessness which made him
+sometimes feel hard and almost brutal. He was "out for" success on the
+large scale, and he was now fiercely determined to win it. Within him
+the real man seemed to recede like a thing sensitive seeking a
+hiding-place. Sometimes, during these strange and crowded days and
+nights, he felt as if he were losing himself in the turmoil around him
+and within him. And the wish came to him to lose himself, and to have
+done for ever with that self which once he had cherished, but which was
+surely of no use, of no value at all, in the violent blustering world.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then he saw the pale shining of the lamp in the quiet studio,
+where he had dwelt with the dear children of his imagination; now and
+then he listened, and seemed to hear the silence there. Then the crowd
+closed about him, the noises of life rushed upon him, and the Claude
+Heath of those far-off days seemed to pass by him fantastically on the
+way to eternal darkness. And, using his will with fury, he cried out to
+the fugitive, "Go! Go!" as to something shameful that must not be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Always he was suffering, as a man only suffers when he tries to do
+violence to himself, when he treats himself as an enemy. But when he had
+time he strove to sneer at his own suffering. Coolness, hardness,
+audacity, these were the qualities needed in life as he knew it now;
+swiftness not sensitiveness, boldness not delicacy. The world was not
+gentle enough for the trembling qualities which vibrate at every touch
+of emotion, giving out subtle music. And he would nevermore wish it
+gentle. Things as they are! Fall down and worship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> them! Accommodate
+yourself to them lest you be the last of fools!</p>
+
+<p>Claude acted, and carried on by excitement, he acted well. He was helped
+by his natural inclination to meet people half-way when he had to meet
+them. And he was helped, too, by the cordiality, the quickness of
+response, in those about him. Charmian did her part with an energy and
+brilliance to which the apparent change in him gave an impetus. Hitherto
+she had tried to excite in Claude the worldly qualities which she
+supposed to make for success. Now Claude excited them in her. His
+vivacity, his intensity, his power to do varied work, and especially the
+dominating faculty which he now began to display, sometimes almost
+amazed her. She said to herself, "I have never known him till now!" She
+said to Alston Lake, "Isn't it extraordinary how Claude is coming out?"
+And she began to look up to him in a new way, but with the worldly eyes,
+not with the mild or the passionate eyes of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Others, too, were impressed by the change in Claude. After the luncheon
+at Sherry's Mrs. Shiffney said, with a sort of reluctance, to Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"The air of America seems to agree with your composer. Has he been on
+Riverside Drive getting rid of the last traces of the Puritan tradition?
+Or is it the theater which has stirred him up? He's a new man."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a good deal more in Claude than people were inclined to suppose
+in London," said Charmian, trying to speak with light indifference, but
+secretly triumphing.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Perhaps, now that you've forced him to
+come out into the open, he enjoys being a storm-center, as they call it
+out here."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I didn't force him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Playfully begged him not to come, I meant."</p>
+
+<p>Claude was sitting a little way off talking to Susan Fleet. Mrs.
+Shiffney had "managed" this. She wanted to feel how things were through
+the woman. Then perhaps she would tackle the man. At lunch it had seemed
+to her as if success were in the air. Had she always been mistaken in
+her judgment of Claude Heath! Had Charmian seen more clearly and farther
+than she had? She felt more interested in Char<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>mian than she had ever
+felt before, and disliked her, in consequence, much more than formerly.
+How Charmian would triumph if the Heath opera were a success! How
+unbearable she would be! In fancy Mrs. Shiffney saw Charmian enthroned,
+and "giving herself" a thousand airs. Mrs. Shiffney had never forgiven
+Charmian for taking possession of Claude. She did not hate her for that.
+Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked
+those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as
+the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating
+Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in
+which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she
+wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his
+intensity, his vivacity, his resolution, she was conscious of
+fascination. He puzzled her. "There really is a great deal in him," she
+said to herself. And she wished that some of that "great deal" could be
+hers. As it could not be hers, unless her judgment of a man, not happily
+come to, and now almost angrily accepted, was at fault, she wished to
+punish. She could not help this. But she did not desire to help it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney separated from the Heaths that day without speaking of the
+"libretto-scandal," as the papers now called the invention of Madame
+Sennier. They parted apparently on cordial terms. And Mrs. Shiffney's
+last words were:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming to see you one day in your eyrie at the Saint Regis. I take
+no sides where art is in question, and I want both the operas to be
+brilliant successes."</p>
+
+<p>She had said not a word about the rehearsals at the New Era Opera House.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was almost disappointed by her silence. She had turned over and
+over in her mind Claude's words about the verdict in advance. She
+continued to dwell upon them mentally after the meeting with Mrs.
+Shiffney. By degrees she became almost obsessed by the idea of Mrs.
+Shiffney as arbiter of Claude's destiny and hers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney's position had always fascinated Charmian, because it was
+the position she would have loved to occupy. Even in her dislike, her
+complete distrust of Mrs. Shiffney,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> Charmian was attracted by her. Now
+she longed with increasing intensity to use Mrs. Shiffney as a test.</p>
+
+<p>Rehearsals of Claude's opera were being hurried on. Crayford was
+determined to produce his novelty before the Metropolitan crowd produced
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>"They've fixed the first," he said. "Then it's up to us to be ready by
+the twenty-eighth, and that's all there is to it. We'll get time enough
+to die all right afterward. But there aren't got to be no dying nor
+quitting now. We've fixed the locusts, and now we'll start in to fix all
+the rest of the cut-out."</p>
+
+<p>He had begun to call Claude's opera "the cut-out" because he said it was
+certain to cut out Sennier's work. The rumors about the weakness of
+Sennier's libretto had put the finishing touch to his pride and
+enthusiasm. Thenceforth he set no bounds to his expectations.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got a certainty!" he said. "And they know it."</p>
+
+<p>His energy was volcanic. He knew neither rest nor the desire to rest.
+His season so far had been successful, much more successful than any
+former season of his. He knew that he was making way with the great New
+York public, and he was carried on by the vigor which flames up in a
+strong and determined man who believes himself to be almost within reach
+of the satisfaction of his greatest desire.</p>
+
+<p>Claude, in his new character of the man determined to win a great
+popular triumph, appealed forcibly to Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made him over!" he exclaimed to Charmian, almost with exultation.
+"He's a man now. When I lit out on him he was&mdash;well, well, little lady,
+don't you begin to fire up at me! All I mean is that Claude knows how to
+carry things with him now. Look how he's stood up against all the
+nonsense about the libretto! Why, he's right down enjoyed it. And the
+first night the pressmen started in he was like a man possessed, talked
+about his honor, and all that kind of rubbish. Now he says 'Stir it up!
+It's all for the good of the opera!' Cane's fairly mad about him, says
+he's on the way to be the best boom-center that ever made a publicity
+agent feel young. I'm proud of him! And he's moving all the time. He'll
+get there and no mistake!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I always knew Claude would rise to his chance if he got it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got it now, don't you worry yourself. Not one man in a million has
+such a chance at his age. I tell you, Claude is a made man!"</p>
+
+<p>A made man! Charmian felt a thrill at her heart. But again she longed
+for a verdict from outside, for a verdict from Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the tumult of her life one day, very soon after the
+lunch at Sherry's, she begged Susan Fleet to come to see her. That day
+Claude and she had been with Gillier at the theater. As they had ignored
+Mrs. Shiffney's treachery in the affair of the libretto, so they had
+ignored Gillier's insulting behavior to them at Djenan-el-Maqui. Against
+his will he was with them now in the great enterprise. They had resolved
+to be charming to him, and had taken care to be so. And Gillier,
+delighted with the notoriety that was his, his conceit decked out with
+feathers, met them half-way. He was impressed by the situation which
+Crayford's powerful efforts had created for them. He was moved by the
+marked change in Claude. These people did not seem to him the same
+husband and wife he had known in the hidden Arab house at Mustapha. They
+had gained immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them.
+Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they
+had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is
+following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He
+was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now
+that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else,
+Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian
+he had always been aware of certain faculties which often make for
+success.</p>
+
+<p>On the day when Charmian was expected to see Susan Fleet she had just
+come from an afternoon rehearsal which had gone well. Gillier had been
+almost savagely delighted with the performance of Enid Mardon, who sang
+and acted the r&ocirc;le of the heroine. He knew little of music, but in the
+scene rehearsed Claude had introduced a clever imitation, if not an
+exact reproduction, of the songs of Said Hitani and his compan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>ions.
+This had aroused the enthusiasm of Gillier, who had a curious love of
+the country where he had spent the wild years of his youth. It had been
+evident both to Charmian and to Claude that he began to have great hopes
+of the opera. Charmian had become so exultant on noticing this that she
+had been unable to refrain from saying to Gillier, "Do you begin to
+believe in it?" As she sat now waiting for Susan she remembered his
+answer, "Madame, if the whole opera goes like that scene&mdash;well!" He had
+finished with a characteristic gesture, throwing out his strong hands
+and smiling at her. She almost felt as if she liked Gillier. She began
+to find excuses for his former conduct. He was a poor man struggling to
+make his way, terribly anxious to succeed. Madame Sennier had "got at"
+him. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he had wished to associate
+himself with Jacques Sennier. Of course he had had no right to suggest
+the withdrawal of his libretto from Claude. That had been insulting. But
+still&mdash;that day Charmian found room in her heart for charity. She had
+not felt so happy, so safe, for a very long time. It was almost as if
+she held success in her hand, as a woman may hold a jewel and say, "It
+is mine!"</p>
+
+<p>A slight buzzing sound told her that there was someone at the outer door
+of the lobby. In a moment Susan walked in, looking as usual temperate,
+kind, and absolutely unconscious of herself. She was warmly wrapped in a
+fur given to her by Mrs. Shiffney. When she had taken it off and sat
+down beside Charmian in the over-heated room, Charmian began at once to
+use her as a receptacle. She proceeded to pour her exultation into
+Susan. The rehearsal had greatly excited her. She was full of the ardent
+impatience of one who had been patient by force of will in defiance of
+natural character, and who now felt that a period was soon to be put to
+her suffering and that she was to enter into her reward. As, long ago,
+in an Algerian garden, she had used Susan, she used her now. And Susan
+sat quietly listening, with her odd eyes dropping in their sockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Susan, do take off your gloves!" Charmian exclaimed presently. "You
+are going to stay a good while, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you like me to."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should like to be with you every day for hours. You do me good. We'll
+have tea."</p>
+
+<p>She went to the telephone, came back quickly, sat down again, and
+continued talking enthusiastically. When the tea-table was in front of
+her, and the elderly German waiter had gone, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it wonderful? I shall never forget how you spoke of destiny to me
+when we were by the little island. It was then, I think, that I felt it
+was my fate to link myself with Claude, to help him on. Do you remember
+what you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"That perhaps it was designed that you should teach Mr. Heath."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say mister&mdash;on such a day as this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, then."</p>
+
+<p>"And, Susan, I don't want to seem vain, but I have taught him, I have
+taught him to know and rely on himself, to believe in himself, in his
+genius, to dominate. He's marvellously changed. Everyone notices it. You
+do, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is a change. And I remember saying that perhaps it was designed
+that you should learn from him. Do you recollect that?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was handing Susan her tea-cup.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at Susan as the latter took the cup with a calm and steady
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What excellent tea!" observed Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? Susan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you are very reserved."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you keep half your thoughts about things and people entirely to
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I think most of us do that."</p>
+
+<p>"About me, for instance! I've been talking a great deal to you in here.
+And you've been listening, and thinking."</p>
+
+<p>There was an uneasy sound in Charmian's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Didn't you wish me to listen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I did. But you've been thinking. What have you been
+thinking?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That it's a long journey up the ray," said Susan, with a sort of gentle
+firmness.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;the ray! I remember your saying that to me long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"We've got a great deal to learn, I think, as well as to teach."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was silent for a minute.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you think I only care to teach, that I&mdash;that I am not
+much of a pupil?" she said at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps that is putting it too strongly. But I believe your husband had
+a great deal to give."</p>
+
+<p>"Claude! Do you? But yes, of course&mdash;Susan!" Charmian's voice changed,
+became almost sharply interrogative. "Do you mean that Claude could
+teach me more than I could ever teach him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible for me to be sure of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. But, tell me, do you think it is so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am inclined to."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt as if she flushed. She was conscious of a stir of
+something that was like anger within her. It hurt her very much to think
+that perhaps Susan put Claude higher than her. But she controlled the
+expression of what she felt, and only said, perhaps a little coldly:</p>
+
+<p>"It ought to be so. He is so much cleverer than I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I mean that. It isn't always cleverness we learn from."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness then!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian forced herself to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think me far below Claude from the moral point of view?" she
+added, with an attempt at laughing lightness.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that either. But I think he has let out an anchor which
+reaches bottom, though perhaps at present he isn't aware of it. And I'm
+not sure that you ever have. By the way, I've a message from Adelaide
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"She wants to know how your rehearsals are going."</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderfully well, as I said."</p>
+
+<p>Charmain spoke almost gravely. Her exultant enthusiasm had died away for
+the moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And, if it is allowed, she would like to go to one. Can she?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian hesitated. But the strong desire for Mrs. Shiffney's verdict
+overcame a certain suddenly born reluctance of which she was aware, and
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so. Why not? Even a spy cannot destroy the merit of the
+enemy's work by wishing."</p>
+
+<p>Susan said nothing to this.</p>
+
+<p>"You must come with her if she does come," Charmian added.</p>
+
+<p>She was still feeling hurt. She had looked upon Susan as her very
+special friend. She had let Susan see into her heart. And now she
+realized that Susan had criticized that heart. At that moment Charmian
+was too unreasonable to remember that criticism is often an
+inevitable movement of the mind which does not touch the soul to change
+it. Her attempt at cordiality was, therefore, forced.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether she will want me," said Susan. "But at any rate I
+shall be there for the first night."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;the first night!" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Again she changed. With the thought of the coming epoch in her life and
+Claude's her vexation died.</p>
+
+<p>"It's coming so near!" she said. "There are moments when I want to rush
+toward it, and others when I wish it were far away. It's terrible when
+so much hangs on one night, just three or four hours of time. One does
+need courage in art. But Claude has found it. Yes, Susan, you are right.
+Claude is finer than I am. He is beginning to dominate me here, as he
+never dominated me before. If he triumphs&mdash;and he will, he shall
+triumph!&mdash;I believe I shall be quite at his feet."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, but tears were not far from her eyes. This period she was
+passing through in New York was tearing at her nerves with teeth and
+claws although she scarcely knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Susan, who had seen clearly the hurt she had inflicted, moved, came
+nearer to Charmian, and gently took one of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," she said. "Does it matter so much which it is?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Matter! Of course it does. Everything hangs upon it&mdash;for us, I mean, of
+course. We have given up everything for the opera, altered our lives. It
+is to be the beginning of everything for us."</p>
+
+<p>Susan looked steadily at Charmian with her ugly, beautiful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it might be that in either case," she said. "Dear Charmian, I
+think preaching is rather odious. I hope I don't often step into the
+pulpit. But we've talked of many things, of things I care for and
+believe in. May I tell you something I think with the whole of my mind,
+and even more than that as it seems to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yes, Susan!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think the success or failure only matters really as it affects
+character, and the relation existing between your soul and your
+husband's. The rest scarcely counts, I think. And so, if I were to pray
+about such a thing as this opera, pray with the impulse of a friend who
+really does care for you, I should pray that your two souls might have
+what they need, what they must be asking for, whether that is a great
+success, or a great failure."</p>
+
+<p>The door opened and Claude came in on the two women.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hear the word failure?" he said, smiling, as he went up to Susan
+and took her hand. "Charmian, I wonder you allow it to be spoken in our
+sitting-room."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I didn't&mdash;we weren't," she almost stammered. But quickly recovering
+herself, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Susan has come with a message from Adelaide Shiffney."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean about being let in at a rehearsal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been with Mrs. Shiffney. She called at the theater after you
+had gone, Charmian. I drove to the Ritz with her and went in."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked narrowly at her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Then of course she spoke about the rehearsal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Madame Sennier dropped in upon us. What do you think of that?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian thought that his face and manner were strangely hard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame Sennier! And did you stay, did you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I thanked her for giving the opera such a lift with her
+slanders about the libretto. I tackled her. It was the greatest fun. I
+only wish Crayford had been there to hear me."</p>
+
+<p>"How did she take it?" asked Charmian, glancing at Susan, and feeling
+uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"She was furious, I think. I hope so. I meant her to be. But she didn't
+say much, except that the papers were full of lies, and nobody believed
+them except fools. When she was going I gave her a piece of news to
+comfort her."</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"That my opera will be produced the night before her husband's."</p>
+
+<p>Susan got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must go," she said. "I've been here a long time, and daresay
+you both want to rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Rest!" exclaimed Claude. "That's the last thing we want, isn't it,
+Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>He helped Susan to put on her fur.</p>
+
+<p>"There's another rehearsal to-night after the performance of <i>A&iuml;da</i>. You
+see it's a race, and we mean to be in first. I wish you could have seen
+Madame Sennier's face when I told her we should produce on the
+twenty-eighth."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. But neither Charmian nor Susan laughed with him. As Susan
+was leaving he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You come from the enemy's camp, but you do wish us success, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have just been telling Charmian what I wish you," answered Susan
+gently, with her straight and quiet look.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you?" He wheeled round to Charmian. "What was it?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;what was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"The&mdash;the very best! Wasn't it, Susan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I wished you the very best."</p>
+
+<p>"Capital! Too bad, you are going!"</p>
+
+<p>He went with Susan to the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he came back he said to Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"Susan Fleet is very quiet, the least obtrusive person I ever met. But
+she's strange. I believe she sees far."</p>
+
+<p>His face and manner had changed. He threw himself down in a chair and
+leaned his head against the back of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to relax for a minute, Charmian. It's the only way to rest.
+And I shall be up most of the night."</p>
+
+<p>He shut his eyes. His whole body seemed to become loose.</p>
+
+<p>"She sees far, I think," he murmured, scarcely moving his sensitive
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian sat watching his pale forehead, his white eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>And New York roared outside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The respective publicity agents of the two opera houses had been so
+energetic in their efforts on behalf of their managements, that, to the
+Senniers, the Heaths, and all those specially interested in the rival
+enterprises, it began to seem as if the whole world hung upon the two
+operas, as if nothing mattered but their success or failure. Charmian
+received all the "cuttings" which dealt with the works and their
+composers, with herself and Madame Sennier, from a newspaper clipping
+bureau. And during these days of furious preparation she read no other
+literature. Whenever she was in the hotel, and not with people, she was
+poring over these articles, or tabulating and arranging them in books.
+The Heaths, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand
+Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath,
+Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph
+Crayford's opinion of Mrs. Charmian Heath, how a clever woman can help
+her husband&mdash;was there really anything of importance in this world
+except Charmian and Claude Heath's energy, enterprise, and ultimate
+success?</p>
+
+<p>From the hotel she went to the Opera House. And there she was in the
+midst of a world apart, which seemed to her the whole of the world.
+Everybody whom she met there was concentrated on the opera. She talked
+to orchestral players about the musical effects; to the conductor about
+detail, color, ensemble; to scene-painters about the various "sets,"
+their arrangement, lighting, the gauzes used in them, the properties,
+the back cloths; to machinists about the locusts and other sensations;
+to the singers about their r&ocirc;les; to dancers about their strange Eastern
+poses; to Fakirs about their serpents and their miracles. She lived in
+the opera, as the opera lived in the vast theater. She was, as it were,
+enclosed in a shell within a shell. New York was the great sea murmuring
+outside. And always it was murmuring of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> the opera. In consequence of
+Jacob Crayford's great opinion of Charmian she was the spoilt child in
+his theater. Her situation there was delightful. Everybody took his cue
+from Crayford. And Crayford's verdict on Charmian was, "She's a
+wonderful little lady. I know her, and I say she's a peach. Heath did
+the cleverest thing he ever did in his life when he married her."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian really had influence with Crayford, and she used it, revelling
+in a sense of her power and importance. He consulted her about many
+points in the performance. And she spoke her mind with decision, growing
+day by day in self-reliance. In the theater she was generally
+surrounded, and she grew to love it as she had never loved any place
+before. The romance and beauty of Djenan-el-Maqui were as nothing in
+comparison with the fascination of the Monster with the Maw, vast, dark,
+and patient, waiting for its evening provender. To Charmian it seemed
+like a great personality. Often she found herself thinking of it as
+sentient, brooding over the opera, secretly attentive to all that was
+going on in connection with it. She loved its darkness, the ghostly
+lightness of the covers spread over it, the ranges of its gaping boxes,
+the far-off mystery of its galleries receding into a heaven of ebon
+blackness. She wandered about it, sitting first here, then there,
+becoming intimate with the monster on whom she sometimes felt as if her
+life and fortunes depended.</p>
+
+<p>"All this we are doing for you!" something within her seemed to whisper.
+"Will you be satisfied with our efforts? Will you reward us?"</p>
+
+<p>And then, in imagination, she saw the monster changed. No longer it
+brooded, watched, considered, waited. It had sprung into ardent life,
+put off its darkness, wrapped itself in a garment of light.</p>
+
+<p>"You have given me what I needed!" she heard it saying. "Look!"</p>
+
+<p>And she saw the crowd!</p>
+
+<p>Then sometimes she shut her eyes. She wanted to feel the crowd, those
+masses of souls in masses of bodies for which she had done so much.
+Always surely they had been keeping the ring for Claude and for her. And
+it seemed to her that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> unseen, they had circled the Isle in the far-off
+Algerian garden where she first spoke of her love and desire for Claude,
+that they had ever since been attending upon her life. Had they not
+muttered about the white house that held the worker? Had they not stared
+at the one who sat waiting by the fountain? Had they not seen the
+arrival of Jacob Crayford? Had they not assisted at those long
+colloquies when the opera which was for them was changed? Absurdly, she
+felt as if they had. And now, very soon, it would be for them to speak.
+And striving to shut her eyes more firmly, or pressing her fingers upon
+them, Charmian saw moving hands, a forest of them below, circles above
+circles of them, and in the distance of the gods a mist of them. And she
+saw the shining of thousands of eyes, in which were mirrored strangely,
+almost mystically, souls that Claude's music, conceived in patience and
+labor, had moved and that wished to tell him so.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the crowd! And she saw it returning to listen again. And she
+remembered, with the extraordinary vitality of an ardent woman, who was
+still little more than a girl, how she had sat opposite to the
+white-faced, red-haired heroine on the first night of Jacques Sennier's
+<i>Paradis Terrestre</i>; how she had watched her, imaginatively entered into
+her mind, become one with her. That night Claude had written his letter
+to her, Charmian. The force in her, had entered into him, had inspired
+him to do what he did that night, had inspired him to do what he had
+since done always near to her. And soon, very soon, the white-faced,
+red-haired woman would be watching her.</p>
+
+<p>Then something that was almost like an intoxication of the senses,
+something that, though it was born in the mind, seemed intimately
+physical, came upon, rushed over Charmian. It was the intoxication of an
+acute ambition which believed itself close to fulfilment. Life seemed
+very wonderful to her. Scarcely could she imagine anything more
+wonderful than life holding the gift she asked for, the gift something
+in her demanded. And she connected love with ambition, even with
+notoriety. She conceived of a satisfied ambition drawing two human
+beings together, cementing their hearts together, merging their souls in
+one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How I shall love Claude triumphant!" she thought exultantly, even
+passionately, as if she were thinking of a man new made, more lovable by
+a big measure than he had been before. And she saw love triumphant with
+wings of flame mounting into the regions of desire, drawing her soul up.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude's triumph will develop me," she thought. "Through it I shall
+become the utmost of which I am capable. I am one of those women who can
+only thrive in the atmosphere of glory."</p>
+
+<p>Claude triumphant, and made triumphant by her! She cherished that
+imagination. She became possessed by it.</p>
+
+<p>Everything conspired to keep that imagination alive and powerful within
+her. Crayford was an enthusiast for the opera, and infected all those
+who belonged to him, who were connected with his magnificent theater,
+with his own enthusiasm. The scene-painter, who had, almost with genius,
+prepared exquisite Eastern pictures, was an enthusiast foreseeing that
+he would gain in the opera the triumph of his career. The machinist was
+"fairly wild" about the opera. Had he not invented the marvellous locust
+effect, which was to be a new sensation? Mr. Mulworth, by dint of
+working with fury and sitting up all night, had become fanatical about
+the opera. He existed only for it. No thought of any other thing could
+find a resting-place in his mind. His "production" was going to be a
+masterpiece such as had never before been known in the history of the
+stage. Nothing had been forgotten. He had brought the East to New York.
+It was inconceivable by him that New York could reject it. He spoke
+about the music, but he meant his "production." The man was a marvel in
+his own line, and such a worker as can rarely be found anywhere. He
+believed the opera was going to mark an epoch in the history of the
+lyric stage. And he said so, almost wildly, in late hours of the night
+to Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was Alston, who was to have his first great chance in the
+opera, and who grew more fervently believing with each rehearsal.</p>
+
+<p>The great theater was pervaded by optimism, which flowed from the
+fountain-head of its owner. And this optimism percolated through certain
+sections of society in New York,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> as had been the case in London before
+Sennier's <i>Paradis Terrestre</i> was given for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>Report of the opera was very good. And with each passing day it became
+better.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian remembered what had happened in London, and thought exultantly,
+"Success is in the air."</p>
+
+<p>It certainly seemed to be so. Rumor was busy and spoke kind things.
+Charmian noticed that the manner of many people toward her and Claude
+was becoming increasingly cordial. The pressmen whom she met gave her
+unmistakable indications that they expected great things of her husband.
+Two of them, musical critics both, came to dine with her and Claude one
+night at the St. Regis, and talked music for hours. One of them had
+lived in Paris, and was steeped in modernity. He was evidently much
+interested in Claude's personality, and after dinner, when they had all
+returned from the restaurant to the Heaths' sitting-room, he said to
+Charmian:</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband is the most interesting English personality I have met. He
+is the only Englishman who has ever given to me the feeling of
+strangeness, of the beyond."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced around with his large Southern eyes and saw that there was a
+piano in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Would he play to us, do you think?" he said, rather tentatively. "I am
+not asking as a pressman but as a keen musician."</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!" Charmian said. "Mr. Van Brinen asks if you will play us a
+little bit of the opera."</p>
+
+<p>Claude got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke firmly. His manner was self-reliant, almost determined. He went
+to the piano, sat down, and played the scene Gillier had liked so much,
+the scene in which some of Said Hitani's curious songs were reproduced.
+The two journalists were evidently delighted.</p>
+
+<p>"That's new!" said Van Brinen. "Nothing like that has ever been heard
+here before. It brings a breath of the East to Broadway."</p>
+
+<p>Claude had turned half round on the piano stool. His eyes were fixed
+upon Van Brinen. And now Van Brinen looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> at him. There was an instant
+of silence. Then Claude swung round again to the piano and began to play
+something that was not out of the opera. Charmian had never heard it
+before. But Mrs. Mansfield had heard it.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven
+angels,"Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God
+upon the earth...."</p>
+
+<p>"'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became
+as the blood of a dead man....</p>
+
+<p>"'The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was
+given to him to scorch men with fire....</p>
+
+<p>"'The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river
+Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
+Kings of the East might be prepared....</p>
+
+<p>"'Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and
+keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>When Claude ceased there was a silence that seemed long. He remained
+sitting with his back to his wife and his guests, his face to the piano.
+At last he got up and turned, and his eyes again sought the face of Van
+Brinen. Then Van Brinen moved, clasped his long and thin hands tightly
+together, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"That's great! That's very great!"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, gazing at Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enormous!" he said. "Do you mean&mdash;is that from the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>He came to sit down, and began to talk quickly of all sorts of things.
+When the two pressmen were about to go away Van Brinen said:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you success, Mr. Heath, as I have very seldom wished it for any
+man. For since I have heard some of your music, I feel that you deserve
+it as very few musicians I know anything of do."</p>
+
+<p>Claude's face flushed painfully, became scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much," he almost muttered. But he wrung Van Brinen's
+thin hand hard, and when he was alone with Charmian he said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of all the men I have met in New York that is the one I like best."</p>
+
+<p>Van Brinen had considerable influence in the musical world of New York,
+and after that evening he used it on Claude's behalf. The members of the
+art circles of the city had Claude's name perpetually upon their lips.
+Articles began to appear which voiced the great expectation musicians
+were beginning to found upon Claude's work. The "boom" grew, and was no
+longer merely sensational, a noisy thing worked up by paid agents.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian became quickly aware of this and exulted. Now and then she
+remembered her conversation with Susan Fleet and had a moment of doubt,
+of wonder. Now and then a fleeting expression in the pale face of her
+husband, a look in his eyes, a sound in his voice, even a movement, sent
+a slight chill through her heart. But these faintly disagreeable
+sensations passed swiftly from her. The whirling round of life took her,
+swept her on. She had scarcely time to think, though she had always time
+to feel intensely.</p>
+
+<p>Often during these days of fierce preparation she was separated from
+Claude. He had innumerable things to do connected with the production.
+Charmian haunted the opera house, but was seldom actually with Claude
+there, though she often saw him on the stage or in the orchestra, heard
+him discussing points concerning his work. And Claude was very often
+away, when rehearsals did not demand his attention, visiting the singers
+who were to appear in the opera, going through their r&ocirc;les with them,
+trying to imbue them with his exact meaning. Charmian meanwhile was with
+some of the many friends she had made in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that Claude was able to meet Mrs. Shiffney several
+times without Charmian's knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>It was an understood thing&mdash;and Charmian knew this&mdash;that Mrs. Shiffney
+was to come to the first full rehearsal of the opera. The verdict in
+advance was to be given and taken. Mrs. Shiffney had called once at the
+St. Regis, when Claude was out, and had sat for ten minutes with
+Charmian. And Charmian had called upon her at the Ritz-Carlton and had
+not found her. Here matters had ended in connection with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> "Adelaide," so
+far as Charmian knew. Mrs. Shiffney had multitudes of friends in New
+York, and was always rushing about. It never occurred to Charmian that
+she had any time to give to Claude, or that Claude had any time to give
+to her. But Mrs. Shiffney always found time to do anything she really
+cared to do. And just now she cared to meet Claude.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago in London, when he was very genuine, she had been attracted by
+him. Now, in New York, when he was dressed up in motley, with painted
+face and eyes that strove, though sometimes in vain, to be false, he
+fascinated her. The new Claude, harder, more dominant, secretly unhappy,
+feverish with a burning excitement of soul and brain, appealed to this
+woman who loved all that was strange, exotic, who hated and despised the
+commonplace, and who lived on excitement.</p>
+
+<p>She threw out one or two lures for Claude, and he, who in London had
+refused her invitations, in New York accepted them. Why did he do this?
+Because he had flung away his real self, because he was secretly angry
+with, hated the self to which he was giving the rein, because he, too,
+during this period was living on excitement, because he longed
+sometimes, with a cruel longing, to raise up a barrier between himself
+and Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>And perhaps there were other reasons that only a physician could have
+explained, reasons connected with tired and irritated nerves, with a
+brain upon which an unnatural strain had been put. The overworked man of
+talent sometimes is confronted with strange figures making strange
+demands upon him. Claude knew these figures now.</p>
+
+<p>He had always been aware of fascination in Mrs. Shiffney. Now he let
+himself go toward this fascination. He had always, too, felt what he had
+called the minotaur-thing in her, the creature with teeth and claws
+fastening upon pleasure. Now he was ready to be with the minotaur-thing.
+For something within him, that was intimately connected with whatever he
+had of genius, murmured incessantly, "To-morrow I die!" And he wanted,
+at any cost, to dull the sound of that voice. Why should not he let his
+monster fasten on pleasure too? The situation was full of a piquancy
+which delighted Mrs. Shiffney. She was "on the other side," and was now
+pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>paring to make love in the enemy's camp. Nothing pleased her more
+than to mingle art with love, linking the intelligence of her brain with
+the emotion, such as it was, of her thoroughly pagan heart. And the
+feeling that she was a sort of traitress to her beloved Jacques and
+Henriette was quite enchanting. One thing more gave a very feminine zest
+to her pursuit&mdash;the thought of Charmian, who knew nothing about it, but
+who, no doubt, would know some day. She rejoiced in intrigue, loved a
+secret that would eventually be hinted at, if not actually told, and
+revelled in proving her power on a man who, in his unknown days, had
+resisted it, and who now that he was on the eve, perhaps, of a wide
+fame, seemed ready to succumb to it. There were even moments when she
+found herself wishing for the success of Claude's opera, despite her
+active dislike of Charmian. It would really be such fun to take Claude
+away from that silly Charmian creature in the very hour of a triumph.
+Yet she did not wish to see Charmian even the neglected wife of a great
+celebrity. Her feelings were rather complex. But she had always been at
+home with complexity.</p>
+
+<p>She managed to get rid of Susan Fleet, by persuading her to visit some
+friends of Susan who lived in Washington. Then it was easy enough to see
+Claude quietly, in her apartment at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and
+elsewhere. Mrs. Shiffney was a past mistress of what she called "playing
+about." Claude recognized this, and had a glimpse into a life strangely
+different from his own, an almost intimate glimpse which both interested
+and disgusted him.</p>
+
+<p>In his determination to grasp at the blatant thing, the big success, a
+determination that pushed him almost inevitably into a certain
+extravagance of conduct, because it was foreign to his innermost nature,
+Claude gave himself to the vulgar vanity of the male. He was out here to
+conquer. Why not conquer Mrs. Shiffney? To do that would be scarcely
+more spurious than to win with a "made over" opera.</p>
+
+<p>He kept secret assignations, which were not openly supposed to be secret
+by either Mrs. Shiffney or himself. For Mrs. Shiffney was leading him
+gently, savoring nuances, while he was feeling blatant, though saved by
+his breeding from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> showing it. They had some charming, some almost
+exciting talks, full of innuendo, of veiled allusions to personal
+feeling and the human depths. And all this was mingled with art and the
+great life of human ambition. Mrs. Shiffney's attraction to artists was
+a genuine thing in her. She really felt the pull of that which was
+secretly powerful in Claude. And she, not too consciously, made him know
+this. The knowledge drew him toward her.</p>
+
+<p>One day Claude went to see her after a long rehearsal. When he reached
+the hotel it was nearly eight o'clock. The rehearsal of his opera had
+only been stopped because it had been necessary to get ready for the
+evening performance. Claude had promised to dine with Van Brinen that
+night, and Charmian was dining with some friends. But, at the last
+moment, Van Brinen had telephoned to say that he was obliged to go to a
+concert on behalf of his paper. Claude had left the opera house, weary,
+excited, doubtful what to do. If he returned to the St. Regis he would
+be all alone. At that moment he dreaded solitude. After hesitating for a
+moment outside the stage door, he called a taxi-cab, and ordered the man
+to drive to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney would probably be out, would almost certainly have some
+engagement for the evening. The hour was unorthodox for a visit. Claude
+did not care. He had been drowned in his own music for hours. He was in
+a strongly emotional condition, and wanted to do something strange,
+something bizarre.</p>
+
+<p>He sent up his name to Mrs. Shiffney, who was at home. In a few moments
+she sent down to say she would see him in her sitting-room. When Claude
+came into it he found her there in an evening gown.</p>
+
+<p>"Do forgive me! You're going out?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you dining?" she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Claude made a vague gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come to dine with me?" she said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"But I see you are going out!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her powerful head.</p>
+
+<p>"We will dine up here. But I must telephone to a number in Fifth
+Avenue."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She went toward the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I can't keep you at home. It is too outrageous!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me time to telephone!" she answered, looking round at him over her
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You are much too kind!" he said. "I&mdash;I looked in to settle about your
+coming to that rehearsal."</p>
+
+<p>She got on to the number in Fifth Avenue and spoke through the telephone
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>"There! That's done! And now help me to order a dinner for&mdash;" she
+glanced at him shrewdly&mdash;"a tired genius."</p>
+
+<p>Claude smiled. They consulted together, amicably arranging the menu.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner was brought quickly, and they sat down, one on each side of a
+round table decorated with lilies of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm playing traitress to-night," Mrs. Shiffney said in her deep voice.
+"I was to have been at a dinner arranged for the Senniers by Mrs.
+Algernon Batsford."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>"Or are you a little bit flattered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"A divinely complex condition. Tell me about the rehearsal."</p>
+
+<p>They plunged into a discussion on music. Mrs. Shiffney was a past
+mistress in the art of subtle flattery, when she chose to be. And she
+always chose to be, in the service of her caprices. She understood well
+the vanity of the artistic temperament. She even understood its reverse
+side, which was strongly developed in Claude. Her efforts were dedicated
+to the dual temperament, and beautifully. The discussion was long and
+animated, lasting all through dinner to the time of Turkish coffee.
+Claude forgot his fatigue, and Mrs. Shiffney almost forgot her caprice.
+She became genuinely interested in the discussion merely as a
+discussion. Her sincere passion for art got the upper hand in her. And
+this made her the more delightful. The evening fled and its feet were
+winged.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to a party at Eve Inness's," she said, when half-past ten
+chimed in the clock on her writing-table. "But I'll give it up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Claude sprang to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Really you must not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount
+of sleep to make up arrears."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't look sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I, in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite
+definitely given up."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he
+remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had
+looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now
+he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he
+felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look
+he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have
+won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels
+it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The
+two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all
+this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think&mdash;" he
+paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.
+But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you
+genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"</p>
+
+<p>After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."</p>
+
+<p>Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked
+absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something
+strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just
+then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or
+desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by
+this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature
+intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her
+either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for
+Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature
+deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude
+felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true
+self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish
+pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment
+was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.
+Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was
+certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But
+he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs.
+Shiffney the right to hate him for ever.</p>
+
+<p>"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly
+contemptible. I must slay it!"</p>
+
+<p>Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.</p>
+
+<p>"You are much too kind!" he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
+"I can never be grateful enough to you. If I&mdash;if I do succeed, I shall
+know at any rate that one&mdash;" He met her eyes and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night!" she said. "I'm afraid I must send you away now, for I
+believe I will run in for a minute to Eve Inness, after all."</p>
+
+<p>As Claude descended to the hall he knew that he had left an enemy behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>But the knowledge which really troubled him was that he deserved to have
+Mrs. Shiffney for an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>His own self, his own manhood, whipped him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>That night, when Claude arrived at the St. Regis, Charmian was still
+out. She did not return till just after midnight. When she came into the
+sitting-room she found Claude in an armchair near the window, which was
+slightly open. He had no book or paper, and seemed to be listening to
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie! Why, what are you doing?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But the window! Aren't you catching cold?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you were listening to 'New York'!" she continued, taking off
+her cloak.</p>
+
+<p>"I was."</p>
+
+<p>She put her cloak down on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Listening for the verdict?" she said. "Trying to divine what it will
+be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something like that, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"There is still a good deal of the child in you, Claude," she said
+seriously, but fondly too.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there? Too much perhaps," he answered in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Are you feeling depressed?"</p>
+
+<p>She sat down close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you doubtful, anxious to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this is rather an anxious time. The strain is strong."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are strong, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"I!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>And there was in his voice a sound of great bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think you are. I know you are."</p>
+
+<p>"You have very little reason for knowing such a thing," he answered,
+still with bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean?"&mdash;she was looking at him almost furtively. "Whatever you
+mean," she concluded, "I can't help it! I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> think you are. Or perhaps I
+really mean that I think you would be."</p>
+
+<p>"Would be! When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I don't know! In a great moment, a terrible moment perhaps!"</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her eyes, and began slowly to pull off her gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"Talking of the verdict," she said presently, glancing toward the still
+open window, "is the date of the first full rehearsal fixed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We decided on it this evening at the theater."</p>
+
+<p>"When is it to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next Friday night. There's no performance that night. We begin at six.
+I daresay we shall get through about six the next morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Friday! Have you&mdash;I mean, are you going to ask Mrs. Shiffney?"</p>
+
+<p>During their long and intimate talk at dinner that evening Claude had
+invited Mrs. Shiffney to be present at the rehearsal, and she had
+accepted. Now it suddenly occurred to him that she was his enemy. Would
+she still come after what had occurred just before he left her?</p>
+
+<p>"I have asked her!" he almost blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>"Already! When?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went round to the Ritz-Carlton t-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Was she in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But she was&mdash;but she went out afterward, to Mrs. Inness."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! And did she accept?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's eyes were fixed upon Claude. He saw by their expression that
+she suspected something, or that she had divined a secret between him
+and Mrs. Shiffney. She looked suddenly alert, and her lips seemed to
+harden, giving her face a strained and not pleasant expression.</p>
+
+<p>"How is she coming?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Are you going to fetch her? Or am I to?"</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't decided. Nothing was said about that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She can't just walk in alone, without a card to admit her, or anything.
+You know what an autocrat Mr. Crayford is."</p>
+
+<p>"But he knows Mrs. Shiffney. We met him first at her house in London,
+don't you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't suppose he's going to let everyone he knows into a rehearsal,
+do you?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude got up from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But&mdash;Charmian, I can't think of all these details. I can't&mdash;I
+can't!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sharp edge to his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I have too much to carry in my mind just now."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said, softening. "I didn't mean"&mdash;the alert expression,
+which for an instant had vanished, returned to her face&mdash;"I only wanted
+to know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't ask me any more! I asked Mrs. Shiffney to come to the
+rehearsal. She said she would. Then we talked of other things."</p>
+
+<p>"Other things! Then you stayed some time?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little while. If she really wishes to be at the rehearsal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But we know she wishes it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, she will suggest coming with you, or she may write to
+Crayford. I'm not going to do anything more about it."</p>
+
+<p>His face was stern, grim.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll shut the window," he added, "or you'll catch cold in that low
+dress."</p>
+
+<p>He was moving to the window when she caught at his hand and detained
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you care if I did? Would you care if I were ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you care if I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She did not finish the sentence, but still held his hand closely in
+hers. In her hand-grasp Claude felt jealousy, warm, fiery, a thing
+almost strangely vital.</p>
+
+<p>"Does she&mdash;is she getting to love me as I wish to be loved?"</p>
+
+<p>The question flashed through his mind. At that moment he was very glad
+that he had never betrayed Charmian, very glad of the Puritan in him
+which perhaps many women would jeer at, did they know of its existence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Charmian," he said, "let me shut the window."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; of course."</p>
+
+<p>She let his hand go.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better not to listen to the voices," she added. "They make one
+feel too much!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Nothing more was said by Charmian or Claude about Mrs. Shiffney and the
+rehearsal. Mrs. Shiffney made no sign. The rehearsals of Jacques
+Sennier's new opera were being pressed forward almost furiously, and no
+doubt she had little free time. Claude wondered very much what she would
+do, debated the question with himself. Surely now she would not wish to
+come to his rehearsal! And even if she did wish to be present, surely
+she would not try to come now! But women are not easily to be read.
+Claude was aware that he could not divine what Mrs. Shiffney would do.
+He thought, however, that it was unlikely she would come. He thought
+also that he wished her not to come.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when the darkness gathered over New York on Friday
+evening, he found himself wishing strongly, even almost painfully, for
+her verdict.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian was greatly excited. Claude still kept up his successful
+pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to
+conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by
+anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished
+by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching.
+She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering
+moments, not far off, when he had shown a sort of furtive bitterness, or
+weariness, or depression, when she had partially divined a blackness of
+the depths. Now his self-confidence lifted her, and she told him so.</p>
+
+<p>"There's an atmosphere of success round you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? We are going to reap the fruits of our labors," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"But even Alston is terribly nervous to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he? My hand is as steady as a rock."</p>
+
+<p>He held it out, by a fierce effort kept it perfectly still for a moment,
+then let it drop against his side.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Only an hour and we begin!" said Charmian. "Oh, Claude! This is almost
+worse than the performance."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Perhaps because it won't be final. And then they say at
+dress rehearsals things always go badly, and everyone thinks the piece,
+or the opera, is bound to be a failure. I feel wrinkles and gray hairs
+pouring over me in spite of your self-possession. I can't help it!"</p>
+
+<p>She forced a laugh. She was walking about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm devoured by nerves, I suppose!" she exclaimed. "By the way, hasn't
+Mrs. Shiffney written about coming to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't seen her again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"How very odd! Do you suppose she will try to get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I tell?"</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't it strange, after her making such a fuss about coming&mdash;this
+silence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably she's immersed in Sennier's opera and won't bother about
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Women always bother."</p>
+
+<p>There was a "b-r-r-r!" in the lobby. Charmian started violently.</p>
+
+<p>"What can that be?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude went to the door, and returned with Armand Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Monsieur Gillier!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked at Gillier's large and excited eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You are coming with us?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you allow me, madame!" said Gillier formally, bowing over her hand.
+"It seems to me that the collaborators should go together."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. It's still early, but we may as well start. The theater's
+pulling at me&mdash;pulling!"</p>
+
+<p>"My wife's quite strung up!" said Claude, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"And Claude is disgustingly cool!" said Charmian.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gillier looked hard at Claude, and Charmian thought she detected
+admiration in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Men need to be cool when the critical moment is at hand," he remarked.
+"I learned that long ago in Algeria."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are not nervous now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nerves are for women!" he returned.</p>
+
+<p>But the expression in his face belied his words.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude is cooler than he is!" Charmian thought.</p>
+
+<p>She went to put on her hat and her sealskin coat. She longed, yet
+dreaded to start.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at the stage-door of the Opera House the dark young
+man came from his office on the right with his hands full of letters,
+and, smiling, distributed them to Charmian, Claude and Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a go!" he said, in a clear voice. "Everyone says so. Mr.
+Crayford is up in his office. He wants to see Mr. Heath. There's the
+elevator!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the lift appeared, sinking from the upper regions under
+the guidance of a smiling colored man.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come up with you, Claudie. Are you going on the stage, Monsieur
+Gillier?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame, not yet. I must speak to Mademoiselle Mardon about the
+Ouled Na&iuml;l scene."</p>
+
+<p>People were hurrying in, looking preoccupied. In a small abode on the
+left, a little way from the outer door, an elderly man in uniform, with
+a square gray beard, sat staring out through a small window, with a
+cautious and important air.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and Claude stepped into the lift, holding their letters. As
+they shot up they both glanced hastily at the addresses.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing from Adelaide Shiffney!" said Charmian. "Have you got
+anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she can't be coming."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems not."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;then we shan't have the verdict in advance."</p>
+
+<p>The lift stopped, and they got out.</p>
+
+<p>"If we had it would probably have been a wrong one,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> said Claude. "The
+only real verdict is the one the great public gives."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. But, still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloh, little lady! So you're sticking to the ship till she's safe in
+port!"</p>
+
+<p>Crayford met them in the doorway of his large and elaborately furnished
+sanctum.</p>
+
+<p>"Come right in! There's a lot to talk about. Shut the door, Harry. Now,
+Mulworth, let's get to business. What is it that is wrong with the music
+to go with the Fakir scene?"</p>
+
+<p>At six o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not
+begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the
+dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And
+from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and
+persistent hammerings.</p>
+
+<p>A very few people were scattered about in the huge space which contained
+the stalls, some nondescript men, whispering to each other, or yawning
+and staring vaguely; and five or six women who looked more alert and
+vivacious. There was no one visible in the shrouded boxes. The lights
+were kept very low.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness
+and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great
+monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign
+lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments,
+and talked together in their sunken habitation.</p>
+
+<p>Seven o'clock struck in the clocks of New York. Just as the chimes died
+away, Mrs. Shiffney drew up at the stage-door in a smart white
+motor-car. She was accompanied by a very tall and big man, with a robust
+air of self-confidence, and a face that was clean-shaven and definitely
+American.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose they've begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked
+slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black
+sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" said the big man in a big voice.</p>
+
+<p>The dark young man came from his office. On seeing the big man he
+started, and looked impressed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crayford here?" said the big man.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he's on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>"Could you be good enough to send him in my card? There's some writing
+on the back. And here's a note from this lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, with pleasure," said the young man, with his cheerful smile.
+"Come right into the office, if you will!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloh!" said Crayford, a moment later to Claude. "Here's Mrs. Shiffney
+wants to be let in to the rehearsal! And whom with, d'you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whom?" asked Claude quickly. "Not Madame Sennier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jonson Ramer."</p>
+
+<p>"The financier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our biggest! My boy, you're booming! Old Jonson Ramer asking to come in
+to our rehearsal! We'll have that all over the States to-morrow morning.
+Where's Cane?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fetch him, sir!" said a thin boy standing by.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to let them in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I going to! Finnigan, go and take the lady and Mr. Ramer to any box
+they like. Ah, Cane! Here's something for you to let yourself out over!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cane read Ramer's card and looked radiant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you are! Go and spread it. This boy's getting
+compliments enough to turn him silly."</p>
+
+<p>And Crayford clapped Claude almost affectionately on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, Mulworth!" he roared, with a complete change of manner. "When
+in thunder are we going to have that curtain up?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude turned away. He wished to find Charmian, to tell her that Mrs.
+Shiffney had come and had brought Jonson Ramer with her. But he did not
+know where she was. As he came off the stage into the wings he met
+Alston Lake dressed for his part of an officer of Spahis.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Claude, have you heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jonson Ramer's here for the rehearsal!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I know. Can you tell me where Charmian is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't an idea! There's the prelude beginning! My! Where are my
+formamints?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian meanwhile had gone into the theater with a dressmaker, who had
+come to see the effect of Enid Mardon's costumes which she had
+"created." Charmian and the dressmaker, a massive and handsome woman,
+were sitting together in the stalls, discussing Enid Mardon's caprices.</p>
+
+<p>"She tore the dress to pieces," said the dressmaker. "She made rags of
+it, and then pinned it together all wrong, and said to me&mdash;to
+<i>me</i>!&mdash;that now it began to look like an Ouled Na&iuml;l girl's costume. I
+told her if she liked to face Noo York&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"H'sh-sh!" whispered Charmian. "There's the prelude beginning at last.
+She's not going to&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Of course she had to come back to my original idea!"</p>
+
+<p>And the dressmaker pressed a large handkerchief against her handsome
+nose, savored the last new perfume, and leaned back in her stall
+magisterially with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of
+the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat
+she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space
+before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat
+within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat
+back a little farther in the box, and whispered to Mr. Ramer.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really going to join the Directorate of the Metropolitan?" she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I may, when this season's over."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Crayford know it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ramer shook his massive and important head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not certain of it myself," he observed, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you do join?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I decide to join"&mdash;he glanced round the enormous empty house. "I
+think I should buy Crayford out of here."</p>
+
+<p>"Would he go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he might&mdash;for a price."</p>
+
+<p>"If this new man turns out to be worth while, I suppose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> you would take
+him over as one of the&mdash;what are they called&mdash;one of the assets?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" He leaned toward her, and just touched her arm with one of his
+powerful hands. "You must tell me to-night whether he is going to be
+worth while."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might when I got him before a New York audience. But you are more
+likely to know to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I have got rather a flair, I believe. Now&mdash;I'll taste the new work."</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak again, but gave herself up to attention, though her
+mind was often with the woman in the sealskin coat who sat so near to
+her. Had Claude said anything to that woman? There was very little to
+say. But&mdash;had he said it? She wondered on what terms Charmian and Claude
+were, whether the Puritan had ever found any passion for the
+Charmian-creature. Claude's music broke in upon her questionings.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney had a retentive as well as a swift mind, and she
+remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto.
+In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where
+there is still romance, still strangeness&mdash;a land upon which
+civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined
+the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might
+produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were helped by
+powerful music.</p>
+
+<p>Now she listened, waited, remembering her visits to Mullion House, the
+night in the caf&eacute; by the city wall when Said Hitani and his Arabs
+played, the hour of sun in the pine wood above the great ravine, other
+hours in New York. There was something in Heath that she had wanted,
+that she wanted still, though part of her sneered at him, laughed at
+him, had a worldly contempt for him, though another part of her almost
+hated him. She desired a fiasco for him. Nevertheless the art feeling
+within her, and the greedy emotional side of her, demanded the success
+of his effort just now, because she was listening, because she hated to
+be bored, because the libretto was fine. The artistic side of her nature
+was in strong conflict<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> with the capricious and sensual side that
+evening. But she looked&mdash;for Jonson Ramer&mdash;coolly self-possessed and
+discriminating as she sat very still in the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine voice!" murmured Ramer presently.</p>
+
+<p>Alston Lake was singing.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've heard him in London. But he seems to have come on
+wonderfully."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an operatic voice."</p>
+
+<p>When Alston Lake went off the stage Ramer remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fellow to watch."</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford's very clever at discovering singers."</p>
+
+<p>"Almost too clever for the Metropolitan, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enid Mardon looks wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>Silence fell upon them again.</p>
+
+<p>The dressmaker had got up from her seat and slipped away into the
+darkness, after examining Enid Mardon's costume for two or three minutes
+through a small but powerful opera-glass. Charmian was now quite alone.</p>
+
+<p>While the massive woman was with her Charmian had been unconscious of
+any agitating, or disturbing influence in her neighborhood. The
+dressmaker had probably a strong personality. Very soon after she had
+gone Charmian began to feel curiously uneasy, despite her intense
+interest in the music, and in all that was happening on the stage. She
+glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
+front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
+places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
+stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
+compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
+felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
+to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
+On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
+at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
+that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
+to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
+occupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
+he?</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
+in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
+sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
+while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
+Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
+which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
+anger.</p>
+
+<p>"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
+me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
+not with me."</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
+out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
+imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
+certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man&mdash;the intentness of the
+heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
+landmarks.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
+Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
+Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
+in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
+the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
+Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
+subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
+moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
+done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
+exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
+had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
+the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
+at whose feet he was laying his homage.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.</p>
+
+<p>She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
+come!"</p>
+
+<p>But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
+was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
+toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
+she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
+woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
+conversation with another person who was hidden.</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.</p>
+
+<p>Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
+from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
+blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
+Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
+that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
+one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
+a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
+Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
+knew say:</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
+to take care of, you must remember."</p>
+
+<p>The words ended in a little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
+sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
+her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
+slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
+four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
+almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
+abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
+the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
+walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> What had
+Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a
+strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She
+did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together
+into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
+"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice
+seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again
+turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly
+this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.</p>
+
+<p>In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never
+seen before, getting up from a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian! Is it you?"</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide Shiffney's voice came from beyond the big man.</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath,
+Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute,
+Charmian."</p>
+
+<p>Adelaide Shiffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But
+Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the
+invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.</p>
+
+<p>But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the
+birth of another.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak
+carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he
+liked pretty women even more than most men do.</p>
+
+<p>"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can
+judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she
+wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.</p>
+
+<p>"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. Shiffney. "She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> will make a
+sensation. And the <i>mise-en-sc&egrave;ne</i> is really exquisite, not overloaded.
+Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."</p>
+
+<p>"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the
+music simply because she knows I only care about that."</p>
+
+<p>She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm
+Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.</p>
+
+<p>"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."</p>
+
+<p>Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was
+quite sure of success.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said
+Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a little late. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left
+entrance near the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. Shiffney, and
+evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"</p>
+
+<p>She was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do
+you know, Jonson?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me that little woman's unfashionable&mdash;mad about her own
+husband!" said Jonson Ramer.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain went up on the second act.</p>
+
+<p>Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a
+seat at his side and touched his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, where have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>Her long fingers closed on his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>His face changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. It's all going well so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly. Adelaide Shiffney's here."</p>
+
+<p>"I know."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's fingers unclasped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You've seen her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes
+they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his
+coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously,
+attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with
+their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide
+Shiffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.
+Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She
+clasped the two arms of her stall.</p>
+
+<p>Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The
+orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the
+watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated
+determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.</p>
+
+<p>Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance
+and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in
+an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in
+silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long
+colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian
+presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a
+snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
+Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
+breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
+would go badly.</p>
+
+<p>"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
+talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
+gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
+only people&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
+Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> to Armand Gillier, and
+caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
+defensive.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
+"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
+least."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly, madame!" he replied.</p>
+
+<p>He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
+eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
+thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
+stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
+not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
+always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
+ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
+with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
+megalomania.</p>
+
+<p>Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
+comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
+nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
+strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
+greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
+felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
+act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
+creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
+the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
+about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
+picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
+listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
+felt both dull and excited.</p>
+
+<p>"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
+pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden
+flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to
+writhe with secret irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>rupting her
+companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."</p>
+
+<p>"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the
+dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."</p>
+
+<p>As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the
+boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the
+financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?
+She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled
+swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have
+gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that
+moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child
+ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.
+Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved
+that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her
+cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected
+the mysterious region from the banality she had left.</p>
+
+<p>But there she was again carried from mood to mood.</p>
+
+<p>She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.
+His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.
+Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are
+bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and
+will go down as easily as a&mdash;Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors
+right for the locust scene?"</p>
+
+<p>He escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rushing toward the
+wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.
+"<i>Mister</i> Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> they're not
+made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light
+on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"</p>
+
+<p>He escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Signora&mdash;ma si! Ma si!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
+the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
+hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
+pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
+eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
+Gillier told me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
+you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
+the third act?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
+Alston Lake.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."</p>
+
+<p>"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alston, I must tell you&mdash;you're an absolute darling!"</p>
+
+<p>She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
+Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
+good things?</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
+masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
+being tossed from one to another by some cruel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> giant. She tried to look
+forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
+at an end."</p>
+
+<p>But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
+an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
+The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
+"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
+was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
+chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
+had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
+in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
+the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
+lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter? I don't care!"</p>
+
+<p>The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
+wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss
+Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.</p>
+
+<p>"This," said Charmian to herself, "is my idea of Hell."</p>
+
+<p>She felt that she was being punished for every sin, however tiny, that
+she had ever committed. She longed to creep away and hide. She thought
+of all she had done to bring about the opera, of the flight from
+England, of the life at Djenan-el-Maqui, of the grand hopes that had
+lived in the little white house above the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Start it again, I tell you!" roared Crayford. "We can't stand here all
+night to hear you talking!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," a voice within Charmian said, "this is Hell!"</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head. She felt like one sinking down.</p>
+
+<p>When the act was over she went out at once. She was afraid of Mrs.
+Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>The smiling colored man took her up in the elevator to a room where she
+found Claude in his shirt sleeves, with a cup of black coffee beside
+him, working at the score. He looked up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Charmian! I've just finished all I can do to-night. What's the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly two."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the third act go well?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at his white face and burning eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down. You look tired."</p>
+
+<p>He went on working.</p>
+
+<p>Just as two o'clock struck he finished, and got up from the table over
+which he had been leaning for hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along! Let's go down. Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, and drank the black coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he said, "won't you have some?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>He rang and ordered some for her. While they were waiting for it she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"What an experience this is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How quietly you take it!"</p>
+
+<p>"We're in for it. It would be no use to lose one's head."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course! But&mdash;oh, what a fight it is. I can scarcely believe that
+in a few days it must be over, that we shall <i>know</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the coffee. Drink it up."</p>
+
+<p>She drank it. They went down in the lift. As they parted&mdash;for Claude had
+to go to Meroni&mdash;Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Adelaide Shiffney's still here."</p>
+
+<p>"If she stays to the end we must find out what she thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Or&mdash;shall we leave it? After all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! I wish to hear her opinion."</p>
+
+<p>There was a hard dry sound in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>Claude disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The black coffee which Charmian had drunk excited her. But it helped
+her. As she went back into the theater for the fourth and last act she
+felt suddenly stronger, more hopeful. She was able to say to herself,
+"This is only a rehearsal. Rehearsals always go badly. If they don't
+actors and singers think it a bad sign. Of course the opera cannot sound
+really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> well when they keep stopping." Another thing helped her now. She
+was joined by Alston Lake who was not on in the last act. He took her to
+a box and they ensconced themselves in it together. Then he produced
+from the capacious pockets of his overcoat a box of delicious sandwiches
+and a small bottle of white wine. The curtain was still down. They had
+time for a gay little supper.</p>
+
+<p>How Charmian enjoyed it and Alston's optimism! The world changed. She
+saw everything in another light. She ate, drank, talked, laughed. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Ramer had vanished from the stalls, but Alston said they
+were still in the theater. They were having supper, too, in one of the
+lobbies. Crayford had just gone to see them.</p>
+
+<p>"And is he satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. He says it's coming out all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't be ready by the date he's fixed for the first night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it can. It's got to be."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't see how it can be."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be. Crayford has said so. And that settles it."</p>
+
+<p>"What an extraordinary man he is!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's a great man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Alston!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Charmian?"</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't make a great mistake, would he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean a huge mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"Not he! There goes the curtain at last."</p>
+
+<p>"And there's Adelaide Shiffney coming in again. She is going to stay to
+the end. If only this act goes well!"</p>
+
+<p>She shut her eyes for a minute and found herself praying. The coffee,
+the little supper had revived her. She felt renewed. All fatigue had
+left her. She was alert, intent, excited, far more self-possessed than
+she had been at any other period of the night. And she felt strongly
+responsive. The power of Gillier's libretto culminated in the last act,
+which was short, fierce, concentrated, and highly dramatic. In it Enid
+Mardon had a big acting chance. She and Gillier had become great allies,
+on account of her admiration of his libretto.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> Gillier, who had been
+with her many times during the night, now slipped into the front row of
+the stalls to watch his divinity.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Gillier!" whispered Charmian. "He's mad about Miss Mardon."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a great artist."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But, oh, how I hate her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>But Charmian would not tell him. And now they gave themselves to the
+last act.</p>
+
+<p>It went splendidly, without a hitch. After the misery of the third act
+this successful conclusion was the more surprising. It swept away all
+Charmian's doubts. She frankly exulted. It even seemed to her that never
+at any time had she felt any doubts about the fate of the opera. From
+the first its triumph had been a foregone conclusion. From the abysses
+she floated up to the peaks and far above them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Alston, it's too wonderful!" she exclaimed. "If only there were
+someone to applaud!"</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be a crowd in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"How glorious! How I long to see them, the dear thousands shouting for
+Claude. I must go to Adelaide Shiffney. I must catch her before she
+goes. There can't be two opinions. An act like that is irresistible.
+Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>She almost rushed out of the box.</p>
+
+<p>In the stalls she came upon Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer who were
+standing up ready to go. A noise of departure came up from the hidden
+orchestra. Voices were shouting behind the scenes. In a moment the
+atmosphere of the vast theater seemed to have entirely changed. Night
+and the deadness of slumber seemed falling softly, yet heavily, about
+it. The musicians were putting their instruments into cases and bags. A
+black cat stole furtively unseen along a row of stalls, heading away
+from Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"So you actually stayed to the end!" Charmian said.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were fastened on Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. We couldn't tear ourselves away, could we, Mr. Ramer?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The last act is the best of all," Mrs. Shiffney said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, isn't it?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight pause. Then Ramer said:</p>
+
+<p>"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband
+unfortunately, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here he is!" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought,
+unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much
+drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to
+Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>She introduced the two men to one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work&mdash;most
+interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and
+glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile.
+"And how admirably put on!"</p>
+
+<p>He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in
+the opera with a great deal of deftness.</p>
+
+<p>"As to Alston Lake, he quite astonished us!" she said presently. "He is
+going to be a huge success."</p>
+
+<p>She discussed the singers, showing her usual half-slipshod
+discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness.</p>
+
+<p>"Altogether," she concluded, "it has been a most interesting and unusual
+evening. Ah, there is Monsieur Gillier!"</p>
+
+<p>Gillier came up and received congratulations. His expression was very
+strange. It seemed to combine something that was morose with a sort of
+exultation. Once he shot a half savage glance at Claude. He raved about
+Enid Mardon.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going round to see her!" Mrs. Shiffney said. "Come, Mr. Ramer!"</p>
+
+<p>Quickly she wished Charmian and Claude good-night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All my congratulations!" she said. "And a thousand wishes for a triumph
+on the first night. By the way, will it really be on the twenty-eighth,
+do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe so," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"We mean to try."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you are workers! And Mr. Crayford's a wonder. Good-night, dear
+Charmian! What a night for you!"</p>
+
+<p>She buttoned her sable coat at the neck and went away with Ramer and
+Armand Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>As she turned to the right in the corridor she murmured to Gillier:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you give it to Jacques? Oh, the pity of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude and Charmian said scarcely anything as they drove to their hotel.
+Charmian lay back in the taxi-cab with shut eyes, her temples throbbing.
+But when they were in their sitting-room she came close to her husband,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, I want to ask you something."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had a quarrel with Adelaide Shiffney?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"A quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Have you given her any reason&mdash;just lately&mdash;to dislike you
+personally, to hate you perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"What should make you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please answer me!" Her voice had grown sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I have. But please don't ask me anything more, Charmian. If you
+do, I cannot answer you."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I understand!" she exclaimed, almost passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why she turned down her thumb at the opera."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, she did, she did! You know she did! There was not one real word
+for you from either her or Mr. Ramer, not one! We've had her verdict.
+But what is it worth? Nothing! Less than nothing! You've told me why.
+All her cleverness, all her discrimination has failed her, just
+because&mdash;oh, we women are contemptible sometimes! It's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> no use our
+pretending we aren't. Claude, I'm glad&mdash;I'm thankful you've made her
+hate you. And I know how!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Don't let us talk about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Adelaide! How mad she will be on the twenty-eighth when she hears
+how the public take it!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude only said:</p>
+
+<p>"If we are ready."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jacob Crayford was not the man to be beaten when he had set his heart
+on, put his hand to, any enterprise. On the day he had fixed upon for
+the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At
+the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every
+stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford
+to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its
+work, the singers were "at home" in their parts. How it had all been
+accomplished in the short time Charmian did not understand. It seemed to
+her almost as if she had assisted at the accomplishment of the
+incredible, as if she had seen a miracle happen. She was obliged to
+believe in it after the final rehearsal, which was, so Crayford, Mr.
+Mulworth, Meroni, and it was even rumored Jimber declared, the most
+perfect rehearsal they had ever been present at.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly three hours and a half!" Crayford had remarked when the curtain
+came down on the fourth act. "So we come ahead of the Metropolitan. I've
+just heard they've had a set back with Sennier's opera; can't produce
+for nearly a week after the date they'd settled. We needn't have been in
+such a devil of a hurry after all. But we've got the laugh on them now.
+Sennier's first opera was a white man. No doubt about that. But the
+hoodoo seems out against this one. I tell you"&mdash;he had swung round to
+Claude, who had just come upon the stage&mdash;"I'd rather have this opera of
+yours than Sennier's, although he's known all over creation and you're
+nothing but a boom-boy up to now. I used to believe in names, but upon
+my word seems to me the public's changing. Give 'em the goods and they
+don't care where they come from."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes twinkled as he added, clapping Claude on the shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>"All very well for you now, my boy! But you'll wish it was the other
+way, p'raps, when you come round to the stage door with your next opera
+on offer!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was in grand spirits. He had "licked" the Metropolitan to a "frazzle"
+over the date of production, and he was going to "lick them to a
+frazzle" with the production. Every reserved seat in the house was sold
+for Claude's first night. Crayford stepped on air.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of the day of production, when Charmian and Claude,
+shut up in their apartment at the St. Regis, and denied to all visitors,
+were trying to rest, and were pretending to be quite calm, a note was
+brought in from Mrs. Shiffney. It was addressed to Charmian, and
+contained a folded slip of green paper, which fell to the ground as she
+opened the note. Claude picked it up.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"A box ticket for the Metropolitan. It must be for Sennier's first
+night, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"It is!" said Charmian, who had looked at the note.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment she gave it to Claude without comment.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class='author'>
+<span class="smcap">Ritz-Carlton Hotel.</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Feb. 28th</i>
+</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Charmian</span>,&mdash;Only a word to wish you and your genius a
+gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even
+Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this
+occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all
+coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our
+best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have
+a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble
+friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers.
+Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your
+genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for
+Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date,
+has had to be postponed for four days&mdash;something wrong with the
+scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Hopes and prayers for the genius.&mdash;Yours ever sincerely,</p>
+
+<p class='author'>"<span class="smcap">Adelaide Shiffney.</span>"</p>
+
+<p>"Susan sends her love&mdash;not the universal brand."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Claude read the note, and kept it for a moment in his hand. He was
+looking at it, but he knew Charmian's eyes were on him, he knew she was
+silently asking him to tell her all that had happened between Mrs.
+Shiffney and him. And he realized that her curiosity was the offspring
+of a jealousy which she probably wished to conceal, but which she
+suffered under even on such a day of anxiety and anticipation as this.</p>
+
+<p>"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box
+ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to
+hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours."</p>
+
+<p>"To yours!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs.
+Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer
+softly. It clicked as it shut. She sighed. Something in the note they
+had just read made her feel apprehensive. It was almost as if it had
+given out a subtle exhalation which had affected her physically.</p>
+
+<p>"Claudie!" she said, turning round. "I would give almost anything to be
+like Susan to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you? But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"She would be able to take it all calmly. She would be able to say to
+herself&mdash;'all this is passing, a moment in eternity, whichever way
+things go my soul will remain unaffected'&mdash;something like that. And it
+would really be so with Susan."</p>
+
+<p>"She certainly carries with her a great calmness."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian gazed at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wonderful to-day, too."</p>
+
+<p>Claude had kept up to this moment his dominating, almost bold air of a
+conqueror of circumstances, the armor which he had put on as a dress
+suitable to New York.</p>
+
+<p>"But in quite a different way," she added. "Susan never defies."</p>
+
+<p>Claude was startled by her shrewdness but avoided comment on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Madre must be thinking of us to-day," he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I thought&mdash;I almost expected she would send us a cablegram."</p>
+
+<p>"It may come yet. There's plenty of time."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian looked at the clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Only four hours before the curtain goes up."</p>
+
+<p>"Or we may find one for us at the theater."</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow I don't think Madre would send it there."</p>
+
+<p>She went to sit down on the sofa, putting cushions behind her with
+nervous hands, leaned back, leaned forward, moved the cushions, again
+leaned back.</p>
+
+<p>"I almost wish we'd asked Alston to come in to-day," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"But he's resting."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But he would have come. He could have rested here with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Better for him to keep his voice perfectly quiet. To-night is his
+d&eacute;but. He has got to pay back over three years to Crayford with his
+performance to-night. And we shall have him with us at supper."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian moved again, pushed the cushions away from her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've ordered it, a wonderful supper, all the things you and Alston
+like best."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't we? You sent Miss Mardon the flowers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The telephone sounded.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Miss Mardon," Claude said, as he listened. "She's thanking me for
+the flowers."</p>
+
+<p>"Give her my love and best wishes for to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Claude obeyed, and added his own in a firm and cheerful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"She's resting, of course," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone resting. It seems almost ghastly."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know&mdash;death-like. I'm stupid to-day."</p>
+
+<p>She longed to say, "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by
+the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> the last moment, show the
+white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been
+such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who have made this day
+possible!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's only the physical reaction," she added hastily. "After all we've
+gone through."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we mustn't give way to reaction yet. We've got the big thing in
+front of us. All the rest is nothing in comparison with to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I know! I hope Madre will cable. If she doesn't, it will seem like a
+bad omen. I shall feel as if she didn't care what happens."</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she will cable. But even if she doesn't, I know she always
+cares very much what happens to you and me. Nothing would ever make me
+doubt that."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not. But I do want her to show it, to prove it to us
+to-day. It is such a day in our lives! Never, so long as we live, can we
+have such another day. It is the day I dreamed of, the day I foresaw,
+that night at Covent Garden."</p>
+
+<p>She felt a longing, which she checked, to add, "It is the day I decreed
+when I looked at Henriette Sennier!" But though she checked the longing,
+its birth had brought to her hope. She, a girl, had decreed this day and
+her decree had been obeyed. Her will had been exerted, and her will had
+triumphed. Nothing could break down that fact. Nothing could ever take
+from her the glory of that achievement. And it seemed to point to the
+ultimate glory for which she had been living so long, for which she had
+endured so patiently. Suddenly her restlessness increased, but it was no
+longer merely the restlessness of unquiet nerves. Anticipation whipped
+her to movement, and she sprang up abruptly from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Claude, I can't stay in here! I can't rest. Don't ask me to. Anything
+else, but not that!"</p>
+
+<p>She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a dear! Take me out!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Where to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere! Fifth Avenue, Central Park! Let us walk! I know! Let us walk
+across the park and look at the theater, our theater. A walk will do me
+more good than you can dream of, genius though you are. And the time
+will pass quickly. I want it to fly. I want it to be night. I want to
+see the crowd. I want to hear it. How can we sit here in this hot red
+room waiting? Take me out!"</p>
+
+<p>Claude was glad to obey her. They wrapped themselves up, for it was a
+bitter day, and went down to the hall. As they passed the bureau the
+well-dressed, smooth-faced men behind the broad barrier looked at them
+with a certain interest and smiled. Charmian glanced round gaily and
+nodded to them.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure they are all wishing us well!" she said to Claude. "I quite
+love Americans."</p>
+
+<p>"A taxi, sir?" asked a big man in uniform outside.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>They went to the left and turned into Fifth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>How it roared that day! An endless river of motor-cars poured down it.
+Pedestrians thronged the pavements, hurrying by vivaciously, brimming
+with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there.
+For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great
+vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America.
+Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"What a world it is to conquer!"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it splendid out here!" she said. "What an almost maddening whirl
+of life. Faces, faces, faces, and brains and souls behind them. I love
+to see all these faces to-day. I feel the brains and the souls are
+wanting something that you are going to give them."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope one or two out of the multitude may be!"</p>
+
+<p>"One or two! Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself
+unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box
+is taken, every single one! Think of that&mdash;and all because of what you
+have done. Are we going to Central Park?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the
+edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city
+like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living
+creature had quicksilver in his veins&mdash;or her veins. For I never saw
+such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you
+conquer these wonderful women!"</p>
+
+<p>Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>"New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going to do without it?"</p>
+
+<p>"When we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, when we go home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Home? But where is our home?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Kensington Square, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again.
+That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we
+really meant to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt
+there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."</p>
+
+<p>She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that
+just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the
+ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."</p>
+
+<p>They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed
+movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray
+squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in
+front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air
+of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if
+it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe,
+whatever others might think.</p>
+
+<p>"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are
+going to be."</p>
+
+<p>"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."</p>
+
+<p>He quoted Dante:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Quanto la cosa &egrave; pi&ugrave; perfetta, pi&ugrave; senta il bene, e cos&igrave; la
+doglienza.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she
+said. "Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.</p>
+
+<p>And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.</p>
+
+<p>"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had
+walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close
+to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite
+side of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of
+their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it.
+Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of
+one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity
+they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly
+lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the
+motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the
+monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And
+out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a judge, or
+judges, prepared to join in the great decision by which was to be
+decided a fate. Both Claude and Charmian were thinking of this as they
+stood together, while the darkness gathered about them and the cold wind
+eddied by. And Charmian longed passionately to have the power to
+hypnotize all those brains into thinking Claude's work wonderful, all
+those hearts into loving it. For a moment the thought of the human
+being's independence almost appalled her.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks cold and almost dead now," she murmured. "How different it
+will look in a few hours!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the
+sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the
+passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even
+herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself,
+but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of
+human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude
+almost startled her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Claude?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come
+along."</p>
+
+<p>And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to
+walk quickly.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the
+colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on
+the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the
+rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to
+gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick
+lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning
+to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the
+Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding
+galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded,
+alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors
+and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed
+women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical
+critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical
+season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the
+libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's
+prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.</p>
+
+<p>Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had
+impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.
+The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be
+trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won
+entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men
+instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood
+side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics
+and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only
+he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of
+his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known
+too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.
+America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out
+of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with
+it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift
+their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of
+the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries,
+the tinkling stream voices of the oases.</p>
+
+<p>Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> anticipation
+to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to
+America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.</p>
+
+<p>Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his
+rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white
+flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to
+him and gently took him by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."</p>
+
+<p>"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on
+him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"</p>
+
+<p>And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed
+themselves on the critic's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."</p>
+
+<p>"Bits of the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me
+enormously&mdash;almost terrible music."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord
+we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me
+get in front?"</p>
+
+<p>In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with
+Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next
+door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer
+and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many
+friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a
+gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid
+Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands
+he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the
+programme with almost greedy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box
+to box. She took up her opera glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you
+see them?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps
+they are too nervous to come."</p>
+
+<p>Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great
+night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Shiffney leaned round to the next box.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just
+coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."</p>
+
+<p>"Where? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale
+green."</p>
+
+<p>"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's
+wife?"</p>
+
+<p>He put up his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. Shiffney.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back into her box.</p>
+
+<p>"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting
+behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her
+across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this
+hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Sennier began to chatter.</p>
+
+<p>At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside
+hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before
+she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come
+a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best
+to-night love. Madre."</p>
+
+<p>Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she
+saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so
+I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied
+that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's
+roses."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had
+turned out the electric burner.</p>
+
+<p>"It's strange to think of Madre in Berkeley Square to-night," said
+Charmian slowly. "I wonder what she is doing."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure she is alone, up in her reading-room thinking of us, in
+one of her white dresses."</p>
+
+<p>"And wishing us&mdash;" she paused.</p>
+
+<p>The first notes of the Prelude sounded in the hidden orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>Claude fixed his mind on the thought of Madre, in a white dress, sitting
+alone in the well-known quiet room, thinking of him&mdash;in that moment he
+was an egoist&mdash;wishing him the best. He could almost see Madre's face
+rise up before him, as it must have looked when she wrote that
+cablegram, a face kind, intense, with fire, sorrow, and love in the
+burning eyes. And the thought of that face helped him very much just
+then, more than he would have thought it possible that anything could
+help him, was a firm and a tender friend to him in a difficult crisis of
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>He sat back in the shadow behind Charmian in a sort of strange
+loneliness, conscious of the enormous crowd around him. He could not see
+the members of this crowd. He saw only Charmian in her pale green gown,
+with a touch of green in her cloud of dark hair, and a long way off the
+stage. He heard perpetually his own music. But to-night it did not seem
+to him to be his own. He listened to it with a kind of dreadful and
+supreme detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him. But he listened
+with great intensity, with all his critical intelligence at work, and
+with&mdash;so at least it seemed to him&mdash;his heart prepared to be touched,
+moved. It was not a hard heart which was beating that night in the
+breast of Claude, nor was it the foolish, emotional heart of the
+partisan, lost to the touch of reason, to the influence of the deepest
+truth which a man of any genius dare not deny. No critic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> in the vast
+theater that night listened to Claude's opera more dispassionately than
+did Claude himself. Sometimes he thought of the colored woman in the
+huge pink hat. He knew she was somewhere in the theater, probably far up
+in that dim gallery toward which he had looked at rehearsal, when the
+building had presented itself to his imagination as a monster waiting
+heavily to be fed. On this one night at least he had fed it full. Was
+not <i>she</i> stretching her great lips in a smile?</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Claude heard faint movements, slight coughing, little sounds
+like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause.
+Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off
+his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with
+cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming!
+Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence of an
+attentive crowd fell again, like some vast veil falling, and Claude
+attended intensely to the music as if it were the music of another.</p>
+
+<p>After the first act there was more applause, which sounded in their box
+rather strong in patches but scattered. The singers were called three
+times, but always in this unconcentrated way.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going splendidly. They like it!" said Charmian quickly. "Three
+calls. That's unusual after a first act, when the audience hasn't warmed
+up. Isn't it odd, Claudie, that Americans always applaud quite
+differently from the way the English do? They always applaud like that."</p>
+
+<p>She had turned right round and was almost facing him.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you notice? Persistently, but in clumps as it were. It is by
+their persistence they show how pleased they are, rather than by
+their&mdash;their&mdash;I hardly know just how to put it."</p>
+
+<p>"By their unanimity perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Not exactly that! Here's Mr. Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>Crayford slipped in, but only stayed for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear that applause?" he said. "They're mad about it. Alston's got them.
+I knew he would. That boy's going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> to be famous. But wait till the
+second act. They're in a fine humor, only asking to be pleased. I know
+the signs. The libretto's hit them hard. They're all asking what's to
+happen next."</p>
+
+<p>"You're satisfied then?" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Satisfied! I'm so happy I don't know what to do."</p>
+
+<p>He was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows!" Charmian said.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were fixed upon Claude. They looked almost defiant.</p>
+
+<p>"If anyone in America knows what he is talking about I suppose it is Mr.
+Crayford," she added.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American
+friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was
+going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"&mdash;all the
+proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on
+such occasions. One of them was an acquaintance of Van Brinen's. Claude
+asked him if Van Brinen were in the house. He said yes. Claude then
+inquired whether Van Brinen knew the number of his box, and was told
+that he did know it. The conversation turned to other topics, but when
+the two men had gone out Charmian said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you ask those questions about Mr. Van Brinen, Claudie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only because I thought if he knew where our box was he might pay us a
+visit. No one has been more friendly with us than he has."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. He's certain to come after the next act. Ah! the lights are
+going down."</p>
+
+<p>She had been standing for a few minutes. Now she moved to sit down.
+Before doing so she drew her chair a little way back in the box.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be distracted from the stage&mdash;my attention, I mean&mdash;by
+seeing too many people," she whispered, in explanation of her action.
+"You are quite right to keep at the back. One can listen much better if
+one doesn't see too much of the audience."</p>
+
+<p>Claude said nothing. The curtains were parting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The second act was listened to by the vast audience in a silence that
+was almost complete.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then Charmian whispered a word or two to Claude. Once she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it wonderful, the silence of a crowd? Doesn't it show how
+absorbed they are?"</p>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's such a mercy that modern methods of composition give no
+opportunity to the audience to break in with applause. Any interruption
+would ruin the effect of the act as a whole."</p>
+
+<p>Claude just moved his head in reply.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was satisfactory. Jacob Crayford had been right. The opera
+was ready for production and was "going" without a hitch. The elaborate
+scenic effects were working perfectly. Miss Mardon had never been more
+admirable, more completely mistress of her art. Nor had she ever looked
+more wonderful. Alston Lake's success was assured. His voice filled the
+great house without difficulty. Even Charmian and Claude were surprised
+by its volume and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Alston splendid?" whispered Charmian once.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Claude replied.</p>
+
+<p>He added, after a pause:</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Alston is safe."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather
+restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it.
+Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again,
+opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience
+almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to
+frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did
+not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her
+as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed
+herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see
+the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her
+box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to
+be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the
+curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> on the
+stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost
+strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the
+act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often
+leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What
+were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the
+libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after
+the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure
+that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was
+sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her
+trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was
+saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices
+for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.</p>
+
+<p>The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had
+heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed
+by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement,
+when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her
+favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the
+opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging
+at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the
+rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken
+it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This
+is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And
+presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me.
+For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my
+thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me
+and I am the ocean."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the
+audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her
+independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a
+nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness
+devised by Crayford.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength,
+like an adversary braced up by conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She
+strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in
+such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!</p>
+
+<p>It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth.
+It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were
+three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and
+conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up
+from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you? Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>Claude got up slowly, picked up the roses and the cablegram from the
+chair beside Charmian, put them behind him, and took the chair, bringing
+it forward quite to the front of the box. As he did so Charmian made a
+sound like a word half-uttered and checked.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" Claude repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Many people in the stalls were looking at him, were pointing him out. He
+seemed to ignore the attention fixed upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" said Charmian, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>She pointed with her fan, then leaned back.</p>
+
+<p>Claude looked and saw Van Brinen not far off. He was standing up in the
+stalls, facing the boxes, bending a little and talking to two smartly
+dressed women. His pale face looked sad. Presently he stood up straight
+and seemed to look across the intervening heads into Claude's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He must see me!" Claude thought. "He does see me!"</p>
+
+<p>Van Brinen stood thus for quite a minute. Then he made his way to one of
+the exits and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"He is coming round to the box, I'm sure," said Charmian cheerfully. "He
+evidently saw us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>But Van Brinen did not come. Nor did Jacob Crayford. Several others
+came, however, and there were comments, congratulations. The same things
+were repeated by several mouths with strangely similar intonations. And
+Charmian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> made appropriate answers. And all the time she kept on saying
+to herself: "This is my hour of triumph, as Madame Sennier's was at
+Covent Garden. Only this is America and not England. So of course there
+is a difference. New York has its way of setting the seal on a triumph
+and London has its way."</p>
+
+<p>Moved presently to speak out of her mind she said to a Boston man,
+called Hostatter, who had looked in upon them:</p>
+
+<p>"It is so interesting, I think, to notice the difference between one
+nation and another in such a matter for instance as this receiving of a
+new work."</p>
+
+<p>"Very interesting, very interesting," said Hostatter.</p>
+
+<p>"You Americans show what you feel by the intensity of your si&mdash;by the
+intensity, the concentration with which you listen."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. And what is a London audience like? I have never been to a
+London premi&egrave;re."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, more&mdash;more boisterous and less intense. Isn't it so, Claude?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt there's a difference," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean they are boisterous at Covent Garden?" said Hostatter,
+evidently surprised. "I always thought the Covent Garden audience was
+such a cold one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered the first night of <i>Le Paradis Terrestre</i>. Suddenly a
+chill ran all through her, as if a stream of ice-cold water had trickled
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Really!" said Hostatter. "And yet we Americans are said to have a bad
+reputation for noise."</p>
+
+<p>He had been smiling, but looked suddenly doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"But as you say," he added, rather hastily, "in a theater we
+concentrate, especially when we are presented with something definitely
+artistic, as we are to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Definitely artistic. My most sincere congratulations."</p>
+
+<p>He went out, and another man called Stephen Clinch, an ally of
+Crayford's immediately came in. After a few minutes of conversation he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody is admiring the libretto. First-rate stuff,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> isn't it? I
+expected to find the author with you. Isn't he in the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but he told us he would sit in the stalls," said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course you'll appear after the next act with him. There's sure
+to be a call. And I know Gillier will be called for as well as you."</p>
+
+<p>His rather cold gray eyes seemed to examine the two faces before him
+almost surreptitiously. Then he, too, went out of the box.</p>
+
+<p>"A call after this act!" said Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they generally summon authors and composers after the
+penultimate act over here."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take the call, of course, Claudie?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I shall take it."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was hard. Charmian scarcely recognized it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll have to go behind the scenes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait till the curtain goes up, and then slip out."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a silence. Charmian broke it at length by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I think Monsieur Gillier might have come to see us to-night. It would
+have been natural if he had visited our box."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he will come presently."</p>
+
+<p>A bell sounded. The third act was about to begin.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous
+desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up
+softly from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll slip away now," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed
+to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word&mdash;she knew not the
+word it would be&mdash;of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her
+eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she
+moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> to her
+eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run
+over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew
+what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within
+her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now
+she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.</p>
+
+<p>There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it
+was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed
+her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up
+and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"May I come in for a little while?" came a calm whisper from Susan
+Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white
+gloves over her hands and arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Susan&mdash;yes! I am all alone."</p>
+
+<p>"That is why I came."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer
+and they saw your husband pass. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he
+was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute."</p>
+
+<p>She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you sitting?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, at the back. Sit by me&mdash;oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers."</p>
+
+<p>She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and
+looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" said Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never
+mind. Claude must have taken it."</p>
+
+<p>The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man
+takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a "tight place."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit here!" she whispered to Susan.</p>
+
+<p>Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one
+of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak
+again till the third act was finished.</p>
+
+<p>It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> Charmian
+had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal.
+She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that
+evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in
+a sort of fierce and active despair: "This is my idea of Hell." She felt
+that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act
+were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread
+an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a
+thing that had caused her agony.</p>
+
+<p>Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous
+act, and anticipating the end, when at last Claude would confront the
+world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.</p>
+
+<p>The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect
+smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on
+its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had
+devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said "wanted a
+lot of doing to." He had "made" the whole of it "over." Charmian
+remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at
+Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest
+at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land.
+She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea
+breaking sullenly against the long line of shore, the beads of sweat on
+the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes
+when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, "Tell me what
+you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."</p>
+
+<p>This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely
+included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene,
+that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away,
+though Susan&mdash;as she knew&mdash;would have made no effort to retain it. She
+was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to
+feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did
+give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she
+was able to feel, however vaguely, something of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> the universal,
+something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars,
+or hear the wind across vast spaces, or see a great deed done. As the
+act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call
+for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that
+went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this
+crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry
+the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first
+night of <i>Le Paradis Terrestre</i>. There had been in it a marvellous sound
+which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made
+her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.</p>
+
+<p>If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at
+the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her
+fate with his.</p>
+
+<p>Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of,
+waited for, the sound.</p>
+
+<p>The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber.
+The scene which succeeded it was a triumph for Alston Lake. Whatever
+else this night might bring forth one thing was certain; Alston had
+"made good." He had "won out" and justified Crayford's belief in him.
+Even his father, reluctantly sitting in the stalls after a hard day in
+Wall Street, was obliged to be proud of his boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Alston!" Charmian found herself whispering. "He's a success.
+Alston's a success&mdash;a success!"</p>
+
+<p>She kept on forming the last word, and willing with all her might.</p>
+
+<p>"Success! Success&mdash;it is coming; it is ours! In a moment we shall know
+it, we shall have it! Success! Success!"</p>
+
+<p>With her soul and&mdash;it seemed to her&mdash;with her whole body, tense in the
+pretty green gown so carefully chosen for the great night, she willed,
+she called upon, she demanded success. And then she prayed for success.
+She shut her eyes, prayed hard, went on praying, marshalling all she and
+Claude had done before the Unseen Power, as reason for the blessing she
+entreated. And while she prayed, her hand ceased from twitching in Susan
+Fleet's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Long though the third act was, at last it drew near its end. And then
+Charmian began to be afraid, terribly afraid. She feared the decisive
+moment. She wished she were not in the theater. She thought of the
+asking eyes of the pressmen, expressing silently but definitely the
+great demand of this wonderful city, this wonderful country: "Be a
+success!" If that demand were not complied with! She recalled the
+notoriety she and Claude had had out here, the innumerable attentions
+which had been showered upon them, the interest which had been shown in
+them, the expectations aroused by Claude. She recalled the many
+allusions that had been made to herself in the papers, the interviews
+with the "clever wife" who had done so much for her husband, the columns
+about her expedition to Paris to get Gillier's libretto for Claude.
+Crayford had taken good care that the "little lady" should have her full
+share of the limelight. Now, through shut eyelids she saw it blaze like
+an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>If the opera should go down despite all that had been done how could she
+endure the situation that would be hers? But it would not go down. She
+remembered that she had once heard that fear of a thing attracts that
+thing to you. Was she who had been so full of will, so resolute, so
+persistent, so marvellously successful up to a point, going to be a
+craven now, going to show the white feather? When that evening began she
+had been sitting in the front of the box, in full view of the audience.
+Now she was sitting in the shadow, clasping a woman's hand. Claude had
+gone to the front of the box when she retreated. Now, in a very few
+minutes, he was going to face the great multitude. He was showing will,
+grit, to-night. And she felt, she knew, that, whatever the occasion,
+there was in Claude something strong enough to turn a bold front to it
+to-night, perhaps on any night or any day of the year. She must help
+him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She
+doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at
+such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow
+like a poltroon.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hand away from Susan's, got up, and took her place alone in
+the front of the box, in sight of all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> people in the stalls, in
+sight also of Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier. Susan remained where she
+was. She felt that Charmian needed to be alone just then. She liked her
+for the impulse which she had divined.</p>
+
+<p>At last the curtain fell.</p>
+
+<p>People applauded.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the American way," Charmian was saying to herself. "Not our
+way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of
+Covent Garden."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening
+for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that
+stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo,
+Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"</p>
+
+<p>The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself,
+and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of
+the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down
+into the soul of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show
+it. I am going to hear the sound."</p>
+
+<p>With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that
+was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat
+violently.</p>
+
+<p>"The sound! The sound!"</p>
+
+<p>The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause
+continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English
+ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.</p>
+
+<p>"They are calling for Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands
+forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.</p>
+
+<p>The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be
+dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite
+apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the
+bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite
+pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against
+terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> full of a
+monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it
+was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.</p>
+
+<p>But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round,
+she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs
+of opera-glasses.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.</p>
+
+<p>"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"Gillier! Author! Author!"</p>
+
+<p>The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed
+itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again
+the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her
+eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through
+the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at
+Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at
+the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she
+was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped
+back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared
+before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated,
+looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone
+on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly came from the audience the sound!</p>
+
+<p>It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent
+Garden on the night of the first performance of <i>Le Paradis Terrestre</i>.
+But essentially it was the same sound.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian heard it and her lips grew pale. But she sat well forward in
+the box, and, though she saw two opera-glasses levelled at her, she
+lifted her hands again and clapped till Armand Gillier passed out of
+sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid
+for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and
+white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the
+"little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by
+Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a
+very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather
+soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock,
+compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne
+was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about
+half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck
+of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was
+still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people
+for whom the preparations had been made came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.</p>
+
+<p>She turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white
+heather?"</p>
+
+<p>She had Alston's red roses in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to put your roses in water now."</p>
+
+<p>She turned again to the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper
+at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, ma'am!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>She picked it up and handed it to Alston.</p>
+
+<p>"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."</p>
+
+<p>She went away, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone
+together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot
+of people round us, or&mdash;really to tell you, I mean, how fine your
+performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from
+to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve
+this great success."</p>
+
+<p>Alston wrung his friend's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs.
+Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have
+scored in it."</p>
+
+<p>"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never enjoy singing any r&ocirc;le so much as I have enjoyed singing
+your Spahi."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any r&ocirc;le better," said
+Claude.</p>
+
+<p>Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.</p>
+
+<p>"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper!
+Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly
+here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so
+splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I
+only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss
+Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he
+thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite
+finished?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely
+upon her lively chattering.</p>
+
+<p>Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of
+inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.</p>
+
+<p>"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost
+afraid&mdash;here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I
+think. Suppose we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his
+glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only
+we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them.
+Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I
+recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was
+very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you
+take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came
+to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"</p>
+
+<p>"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about
+Blue Points&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an
+opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed
+to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his
+exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her
+champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her
+eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of
+intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with
+a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him
+herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one
+when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the
+door of the lobby.</p>
+
+<p>Charmian moved uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."</p>
+
+<p>She got up.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.</p>
+
+<p>He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Claude?"</p>
+
+<p>"A note or letter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently."</p>
+
+<p>"Do read it. But have you finished?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was
+burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and
+Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She
+gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a
+letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so
+Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows
+came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was
+with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to
+Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she
+heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which
+slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When
+he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat,
+and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but
+she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she
+could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table.
+Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"&mdash;his kind and honest eyes went
+from Charmian to Claude&mdash;"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the
+way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The
+fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take
+it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel
+like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> want a good long
+rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar,
+lit it for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Charmian&mdash;" he said.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather
+blunt features looked boyish and emotional.</p>
+
+<p>"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to
+the critics and the public."</p>
+
+<p>He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just
+repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door
+behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any
+words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She
+moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them
+down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which
+the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the
+water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long
+stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent
+sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
+When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do.
+And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it
+ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and
+Claude came in.</p>
+
+<p>"What a lot you had to say to each&mdash;" she began.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after
+a moment of silence.</p>
+
+<p>"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all
+till to-morrow. Do you mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing
+expression which had stopped the words on her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> lips. Always Claude's
+face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by
+that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she
+had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt
+frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I
+don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure
+I couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You were telling him again how splendidly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper.
+I had to tell him something else&mdash;what I thought of my own."</p>
+
+<p>"What you&mdash;what you thought of your own!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless,
+soulless, hateful work."</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!" she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have
+deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here
+at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"&mdash;his eyes pierced her&mdash;"do you
+dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when
+you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you
+dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you&mdash;oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack
+your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will,
+a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind.
+"It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you
+didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I
+shall not believe you."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her
+strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight
+against the malign power of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak,
+to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius,
+that everyone would recognize it as such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> soon, very soon, if not now,
+immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not
+speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity
+left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand
+to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers&mdash;Madre's
+cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the
+other corner of the sofa beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to read that."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She took the letter and read.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Mr. Heath</span>,&mdash;I've left the opera-house and have
+come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work
+which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send
+this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of
+me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate
+it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and
+think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say
+we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no
+convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we
+are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of
+faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I
+try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work
+to-night. That is why I am sending you this.</p>
+
+<p>"Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say
+that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long
+not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me.
+Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which
+troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be
+a success.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the wound!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, of course&mdash;I can't know&mdash;whether you are aware of
+the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is
+presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who
+couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to
+try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are
+a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing
+this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew
+to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no
+more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of
+gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you
+must know.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'</p>
+
+<p>"It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other
+night, after I dined with you&mdash;you remember? Gold it was, that's
+certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the
+world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great
+article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night.
+That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this
+season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to
+do it. And yet&mdash;do I altogether? I don't want to show up as
+conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun
+to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article,
+be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that
+cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer
+to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better
+still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go
+ahead. I can't do anything else.</p>
+
+<p>"But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music
+worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.&mdash;Your
+very sincere friend, and your admirer,</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+"<span class="smcap">Alfred Van Brinen</span>."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she
+bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When
+she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a
+long time. The letter had van<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span>ished from her sight. And how much else
+had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.</p>
+
+<p>At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"You've finished the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"May I have it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted
+her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She
+heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why?
+Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am
+tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as
+have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to
+remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of
+weakness."</p>
+
+<p>Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of
+growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured
+me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous
+lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act
+Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the
+piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that
+the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my
+complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience
+applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was
+necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made
+comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>
+before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true
+enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."</p>
+
+<p>He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and
+walked toward the farther wall of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>He had turned.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Crayford said nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all
+made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself.
+And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've
+all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And
+you&mdash;you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what
+I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself,
+and you least of all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Claude!"</p>
+
+<p>"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from
+the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to
+guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some
+talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success!
+You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you
+had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little
+unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little
+unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom
+nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his
+friends. You thought I was an eccentricity&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve
+which had broken in this reserved man.</p>
+
+<p>"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was
+meant to do, what I could do, drawing my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> inspiration not from the
+fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts,
+which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found
+their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other
+people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care
+what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And
+from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's
+the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till
+she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe&mdash;I believe in my
+soul it's the only chance for a man."</p>
+
+<p>He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"The only chance for a man."</p>
+
+<p>He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the
+world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface
+ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a
+host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that
+I fancied I might make something of since we married, <i>The Hound of
+Heaven</i>, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found
+me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and
+opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted
+yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in
+London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life
+of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all
+that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for
+me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to
+let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps
+you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do
+it. But I've got to build in freedom."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes
+not of a man crushed but of a man released.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"In&mdash;freedom?" she almost whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> failure before
+the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt,
+had completely overwhelmed her.</p>
+
+<p>In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void
+opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till
+this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"In freedom!" she said again. "What&mdash;what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look
+of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never
+had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She got slowly up from the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that&mdash;all you mean?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"All! Isn't it enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"But is it all? I want to know&mdash;I must know!"</p>
+
+<p>The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look
+like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as
+if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly.
+The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her
+eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that
+went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you meant by freedom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed and went forward against him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think&mdash;do you care?" he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his
+arms around her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care for the man who has failed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek,
+breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed
+into his, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was&mdash;the man,
+not the triumph."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to
+take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on
+a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on
+the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my only mother, if&mdash;there's always an 'if' in our poor lives,
+isn't there?"</p>
+
+<p>"If?" said her mother gently.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the
+winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it
+in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America.
+Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played
+agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of
+dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She
+sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her
+delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which
+at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and
+fro.</p>
+
+<p>"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at
+last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian.
+Claude wishes to go there again?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is Claude who has decided the whole thing."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian's voice held a new sound. Mrs. Mansfield looked closely at her
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Madre, he and I&mdash;well, I think we have earned our retreat.
+We&mdash;we did stand up to the failure. We went to the first night of
+Jacques Sennier's new opera and helped, as everyone in an audience can
+help, to seal its triumph. I&mdash;I went round to Madame Sennier's box with
+Claude&mdash;Adelaide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> Shiffney and Armand Gillier were in it!&mdash;and
+congratulated her. Madre, we faced the music."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice quivered slightly. Mrs. Mansfield impulsively took her child's
+hands and held them.</p>
+
+<p>"We faced the music. Claude is strong. I never knew what he was before.
+Without that tremendous failure I never should have known him. He helped
+me. I didn't know one human being could help another as Claude helped me
+after the failure of the opera. Even Mr. Crayford admired him. He said
+to me the last day, when we were going to start for the ship: 'Well,
+little lady, you've married the biggest failure we've brought over here
+in my time, but you have married a man!' And I said&mdash;I said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my only child?"</p>
+
+<p>"'I believe that's all a woman wants.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mansfield's dark, intense eyes searched Charmian's.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it all that <i>you</i> want?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't the fear of the crowd still haunting you? Isn't uneasy ambition
+still tugging at you?"</p>
+
+<p>Charmian took her foot away from Caroline's side and sat very still for
+a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I do want Claude to succeed, yes, I do, Madre. I believe every woman
+wants her man to succeed. But I shall never interfere again&mdash;never. I've
+had my lesson. I've seen the truth, both of myself and of Claude. But I
+shall always wish Claude to succeed, not in my way, but in his own. And
+I think he will. Yes, I believe he will. Weren't we&mdash;he and I&mdash;both
+extremists? I think perhaps we were. I may have been vulgar&mdash;oh, that
+word!&mdash;in my desire for fame, in my wish to get out of the crowd. But
+wasn't Claude just a little bit morbid in his fear of life, in his
+shrinking from publicity? I think, perhaps, he was. And I know now he
+thinks so. Claude is changed, Madre. All he went through in New York has
+changed him. He's a much bigger man than he was when we left England.
+You must see that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do see it."</p>
+
+<p>"From now onward he'll do the work he is fitted to do,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> only that. But I
+think he means to let people hear it. He said to me only last night:
+'Now they all know the false man, I have the wish to show them the man
+who is real.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The man who had the crucifix standing before his piano," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, in a low voice. "The man who heard a great voice out of the
+temple speaking to the seven angels."</p>
+
+<p>She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ever play you that?" she asked Charmian.</p>
+
+<p>"One night in America, when our dear friend, Alfred Van Brinen, was with
+us. But he played it for Mr. Van Brinen."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;since then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madre, he has played it since then for me."</p>
+
+<p>Charmian got up from her chair. She stood by the fire. Her thin body
+showed in clear outline against the flames, but her face was a little in
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Madretta," she began, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" said Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+<p>"Susan Fleet and I were once talking about theosophy. And Susan said a
+thing I have never forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"What was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said: 'It's a long journey up the Ray.' I didn't understand. And
+she explained that by the Ray she meant the bridge that leads from the
+personal which perishes to the immortal which endures. Madre, I shall
+always be very personal, I think. I can't help it. I don't know that I
+even want to help it. But&mdash;but I do believe that in America, that night
+after the opera, I took a long, long step on the journey up the Ray. I
+must have, I think, because that night I was happy."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes became almost mysterious in the firelight. She looked down and
+added, in a withdrawn voice:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> was happy in failure!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, in success!" said Mrs. Mansfield.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19491-h.htm or 19491-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/9/19491/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/19491-h/images/img004a.jpg b/19491-h/images/img004a.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e68e3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/img004a.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/img01.jpg b/19491-h/images/img01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8aa8728
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/img01.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/img02.jpg b/19491-h/images/img02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fd0363
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/img02.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/img03.jpg b/19491-h/images/img03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7da616b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/img03.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/img04.jpg b/19491-h/images/img04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4459c74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/img04.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/imgcover.jpg b/19491-h/images/imgcover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf1faac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/imgcover.jpg
diff --git a/19491-h/images/imgfrontspiece.jpg b/19491-h/images/imgfrontspiece.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..085283d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491-h/images/imgfrontspiece.jpg
diff --git a/19491.txt b/19491.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..718dade
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21413 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Way of Ambition
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Illustrator: J. H. Gardner Soper
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19491]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "CHARMIAN, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT AN EXTRAORDINARY CORNISH
+GENIUS? D'YOU LIKE HIM SO MUCH?"--_Page 76_]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  WAY OF AMBITION
+
+  BY
+
+  ROBERT HICHENS
+
+
+  _Author of "The Garden of Allah," "The Fruitful Vine,"
+  "The Woman with the Fan," "Tongues of
+  Conscience," "Felix," etc._
+
+
+  WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR
+  AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE BY
+  J. H. GARDNER SOPER
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+  Copyright, 1913, by
+  ROBERT HICHENS
+  Copyright, 1912, 1913, by
+  THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING CO.
+  _August, 1913_
+
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  "'Charmian, what's all this about an extraordinary
+  Cornish genius? D'you like him so much?'"               _Frontispiece_
+
+  "'This is the last thing I've done'"                           40
+
+  "'Of course we wives of composers are apt to be
+  prejudiced'"                                                  242
+
+  "At her feet the crouching Arabs never stirred"               258
+
+  "'Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win!'"            378
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY OF AMBITION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"We want a new note in English music," said Charmian, in her clear and
+slightly authoritative voice. "The Hallelujah Chorus era has gone at
+last to join all the Victorian relics. And the nation is drifting
+musically. Of course we have a few composers who are being silly in the
+attempt to be original, and a few others who still believe that all the
+people can stand in the way of home-grown products is a ballad or a Te
+Deum. But what we want is an English composer with a soul. I'm getting
+quite sick of heads. They are bearable in literature. But when it comes
+to music, one's whole being clamors for more."
+
+"I have heard a new note in English music," observed a middle-aged, bald
+and lively-looking man, who was sitting on the opposite side of the
+drawing-room in Berkeley Square.
+
+"Oh, but, Max, you always--"
+
+"An absolutely new note," interrupted Max Elliot with enthusiastic
+emphasis, turning to the man with the sarcastic mouth who had just
+spoken. "Your French blood makes you so inclined to incredulity, Paul,
+that you are incapable of believing anything but that I am carried
+away."
+
+"As usual!"
+
+"As sometimes happens, I admit. But you will allow that in matters
+musical my opinion is worth something, my serious and deliberately
+formed opinion."
+
+"How long has this opinion been forming?"
+
+"Some months."
+
+"Some months!" exclaimed Charmian. "You've kept your new note to
+yourself all that time! Is it a woman? But of course it can't be. I
+don't believe there will ever be a great woman composer."
+
+"It is not a woman."
+
+"Was it born in the gutter?" asked Paul Lane.
+
+"No."
+
+"Don't say it's aristocratic!" said Charmian, slightly screwing up her
+rather Japanese-looking eyes. "I cannot believe that anything really
+original in soul, really intense, could emanate from the British
+peerage. I know it too well."
+
+"It is neither aristocratic nor from the gutter. It is of the middle
+classes. Its father is a banker in the West of England."
+
+"A banker!" said Charmian in a deplorable voice.
+
+"It is Cornish."
+
+"Cornish! That's better. Strange things sometimes come out of Cornwall."
+
+"It has a little money of its own."
+
+"And its name--"
+
+"Is Claude Heath."
+
+"Claude Heath," slowly repeated Charmian. "The name means nothing to me.
+Do you know it, Mr. Lane?"
+
+Paul Lane shook his smooth black head.
+
+"Heath has not published anything," said Max Elliot, quite unmoved by
+the scepticism with which the atmosphere of Mrs. Mansfield's
+drawing-room was obviously charged.
+
+"Not even a Te Deum?" asked Charmian.
+
+"No, though I confess he has composed one."
+
+"If he has composed a Te Deum I give him up. He is _vieux jeu_. He
+should go and live in the Crystal Palace."
+
+"And it's superb!" added Max Elliot. "Till I heard it I never realized
+what the noble words of the Te Deum meant."
+
+Suddenly he got up and moved toward the window murmuring, "All the Earth
+doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting."
+
+There was a silence in the room. Charmian's eyes suddenly filled with
+tears, she scarcely knew why. She felt as if a world was opening out
+before her, as if there were wide horizons to call to the gaze of those
+fitted to look upon them, and as if, perhaps, she were one of these
+elect.
+
+"Father Everlasting!" The words, and the way in which Max Elliot had
+spoken them, struck into her heart, and so made her feel keenly that
+she was a girl who had a heart that was not hard, that was eager,
+desirous, perhaps deep. As to Paul Lane, he stared at his remarkably
+perfect boots, and drew down the corners of his lips, and his white face
+seemed to darken as if a cloud floated through his mind and cast a
+shadow outward.
+
+In the pause the drawing-room door opened, and a woman with blazing dark
+eyes and snow-white hair, wearing a white tea-gown and a necklace of
+very fine Egyptian scarabs, came in, with an intense, self-possessed and
+inquiring look. This was Mrs. Mansfield, "my only mother," as Charmian
+sometimes absurdly called her.
+
+"You are talking, or you were talking, of something or somebody
+interesting," she said at once, looking round her at the three occupants
+of the room.
+
+Max Elliott turned eagerly toward her. He rejoiced in Mrs. Mansfield,
+and often came to her to "warm his hands at her delightful blaze."
+
+"Of somebody very interesting."
+
+"Whom we don't know?"
+
+"Whom very few people in London know."
+
+"A composer, my only mother, who never publishes, and who is the son of
+a banker in the West of England."
+
+Charmian seemed suddenly to have recovered her former mood, but she
+blinked away two tears as she spoke.
+
+"Why shouldn't he be?" said Mrs. Mansfield, sitting down on a large sofa
+which stood at right angles to the wood fire.
+
+"I know, but it doesn't seem right."
+
+"Don't be ridiculously conventional, my only child."
+
+Charmian laughed, showing lovely, and very small teeth. She was not
+unlike her mother in feature, but she was taller, more dreamy, less
+vivid, less straightforward in expression. At times there was a hint of
+the minx in her. She emerged from her dreams to be impertinent. A
+certain shrewdness mingled with her audacity. At such moments, as men
+sometimes said, "you never knew where to have her." She was more
+self-conscious and more worldly than her mother. Secret ambition worried
+at her mind, and made her restless in body. When she looked at a crowd
+she sometimes felt an almost sick sensation as of one near to drowning.
+"Oh, to rise, to be detached from all these myriads!" she thought. "To
+be apart and recognized as apart! Only that can make life worth the
+living." She had been heard to say, "I would rather sink forever in the
+sea than in the sea of humanity. I would rather die than be one of the
+unknown living." Charmian sometimes exaggerated. But she was genuinely
+tormented by the modern craze for notoriety. Only she called it fame.
+
+Once she had said something to her mother of her intense desire to
+emerge from the crowd. Mrs. Mansfield's reply was: "Do you believe you
+have creative force in you then?" "How can I know?" Charmian had
+answered. "I'm so young." "Try to create something and probably you'll
+soon find out," returned her mother. Since that day Charmian had tried
+to create something, and had found out. But she had not told Mrs.
+Mansfield. She was now twenty-one, and had been just eighteen when her
+mother's advice had driven her into the energy which had proved futile.
+
+Max Elliot crossed the room and sat down on the sofa by Mrs. Mansfield.
+He adored her quite openly, as many men did. The fact that she was a
+widow and would never marry again made adoration of her agreeably
+uncomplex. Everybody knew that Mrs. Mansfield would never marry again,
+but nobody perhaps could have given a perfectly clear explanation of
+how, or why, that knowledge had penetrated him. The truth was that she
+was a woman with a great heart, and had given that heart to the husband
+who was dead, and for whom she had never worn "weeds."
+
+"What are we to do for Charmian, my dear Max?" continued Mrs. Mansfield,
+throwing a piteous look into her mobile face, a piteous sound into her
+voice. "What can anyone do for a young woman of twenty-one who, when she
+is thinking naturally, thinks it impossible for a West of England banker
+to cause the birth of a son talented in an art?"
+
+"I always said there was intellectual cruelty in mother," said Charmian,
+drawing her armchair nearer to the fire.
+
+"It's bracing, tones up the mind," said Paul Lane. "But what about this
+new note? All we know is a Cornish extraction, a banker papa and a Te
+Deum."
+
+"Oh--a Te Deum!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, looking suddenly sceptical.
+
+"I know! I know!" said Max Elliot. "I didn't want to hear it till I had
+heard it. And then I wanted to hear nothing else. The touch of genius
+startles everything into life."
+
+"Another genius!" said Paul Lane.
+
+And thereupon, as if acting on a sudden impulse, he got up, said
+good-bye, and went away with his curiosity, if he had any, ungratified.
+
+"He's spoilt by the French blood his mother gave him," said Mrs.
+Mansfield as the door closed. "If he had been all French, one might have
+delighted in him, taken him on the intellectual side, known where one
+was, skipped the coldness and the irony, clung to the wit, vivacity and
+easy charm. But he's a modern Frenchman, boxing with an Englishman and
+using his feet half the time. And that's dreadful. In an English
+drawing-room I don't like the Savate. Now tell us, tell us! I am so
+thankful he is not a celebrity."
+
+"Nor ever likely to be unless he marries the wrong woman."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" asked Charmian with curiosity.
+
+"A woman who is ambitious for him and pushes him."
+
+"But if this Claude Heath has so much talent, surely it would be a fine
+thing to make him give it to the world."
+
+"That depends on his temperament, I daresay," said Mrs. Mansfield. "I
+believe there are people who ought to hide their talents in a napkin."
+
+"Oh, mother! Explain!"
+
+"Some plants can only grow in darkness."
+
+"Very nasty ones, I should think! Deadly nightshade! That sort of
+thing!"
+
+"Poor dear! I gave her light in a vulgar age. She can't help it," said
+Mrs. Mansfield to Max Elliot. "We are her refined seniors. But sheer
+weight of years has little influence. Never mind. Go on. You and I at
+least can understand."
+
+As she spoke she laid her hand, on which shone several curious rings,
+over Charmian's, and she kept it there while Max Elliot gave some
+account of Claude Heath.
+
+"He's not particularly handsome in features. He's quite conventional in
+dress. His instinct would probably be to use the shell as a close
+hiding-place for anything strange, unusual that it contains. He crops
+his hair, and, I should think, wets it two or three times a day for fear
+people should see that it has a natural wave in it. His neckties are the
+most humdrum that can be discovered in the shops."
+
+"Does he dislike his appearance?" asked Charmian.
+
+"I daresay. The worst of it is that he has eyes that give the whole
+thing away to a Mrs. Mansfield."
+
+"What, and not to me?" said Charmian, in an injured note.
+
+"She's fairly sharp, poor dear!" observed Mrs. Mansfield, in a rescuing
+voice. "You mustn't be too hard on her."
+
+Max Elliot smiled.
+
+"And a Charmian Mansfield."
+
+"What color are his eyes?" inquired Charmian.
+
+"I really can't tell you for certain, but I should think dark gray."
+
+"And where does he live?"
+
+"In a little house not far from St. Petersburg Place on the north side
+of the Park, Mullion House he calls it. He's got a studio there which
+opens into a pocket-handkerchief of a garden. He keeps two women
+servants."
+
+"Any dogs?" said Charmian.
+
+"No."
+
+"Cats?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"I don't feel as if I should like him. Does he compose at the piano?"
+
+"No, away from it."
+
+"He's unsympathetic. Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties,
+composing away from the piano, no animals--it's all against me except
+the little house."
+
+"Because you take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said
+her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add,
+without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in
+your views. You can't forget having read the _Vie de Boheme_, and having
+heard, and unfortunately seen, Paderewski when you were a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."
+
+"It is my beloved mother's fault that I ever was a schoolgirl at
+Brighton."
+
+"Ah, don't press down that burden of crime upon my soul! Lift it, by
+freeing yourself from the Brighton tradition, which I ought to have kept
+for ever from you. And now, Max, tell us, whom does Mr. Heath know?"
+
+"I know very little about his acquaintance. I met him first at
+Wonderland."
+
+"What's that?" asked Charmian. "It sounds more promising."
+
+"It's gone now, but it was a place in Whitechapel, where they had boxing
+competitions, Conky Joe against the Nutcracker--that kind of thing."
+
+"I give him up, Te Deum, Conky Joe and all!" she exclaimed in despair.
+
+"Do you mean me to meet him, Max?" asked Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Yes. I can't keep him to myself any longer. I must share him with
+someone who understands. Come to-morrow evening, won't you, after
+dinner? Heath is dining with me."
+
+"Yes. Is Charmian invited?"
+
+Max Elliot looked at Charmian, and she steadily returned his gaze.
+
+"You know," he said after a pause, "that you've got a certain hankering
+after lions?"
+
+"Hankering! Don't, don't!"
+
+"But you really have!"
+
+"I will not be put with the vulgar crowd like that. I do not care for
+lions. Tigers are my taste."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do come then. But remember, there are plants which can only grow in
+darkness. And I believe this is one of them."
+
+When Max Elliot had gone, Charmian sat for two or three minutes looking
+into the fire, where pale, steely-blue lights played against the
+prevailing gold and red. All the absurdity, the nonsense, had dropped
+away from her.
+
+"Max Elliot seems quite afraid of me," she said at last. "Am I so very
+vulgar?"
+
+"Not more so than most intelligent young women who are rather 'in it' in
+London," returned her mother.
+
+"Surely I'm not a climber, without knowing it!"
+
+"No, I don't think so. But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd
+naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort
+to keep your head above water."
+
+"How very awful! I don't know why it is, but your head always is well
+above water without your making any effort."
+
+"I don't bother as to whether it is or not, you see."
+
+"No. But what has it all to do with this Mr. Heath?"
+
+"Perhaps we shall find out to-morrow night. Max may think you'll be
+inclined to rave about him."
+
+"Rave about a cropped head that composes away from the piano!"
+
+"Ah, that Brighton tradition!" said Mrs. Mansfield, taking up Steiner's
+_Teosofia_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+In the comedy of London Mrs. Mansfield and her daughter did not play
+leading parts, but they were, in the phrase of the day, "very much in
+it." Mrs. Mansfield's father had been a highly intelligent, cultivated,
+charming and well-off man, who had had a place in the Isle of Wight, and
+been an intimate friend of Tennyson, and of most of the big men of his
+day. Her mother had possessed the peculiar and rather fragile kind of
+beauty which seems to attract great English painters, and had been much
+admired and beloved in Melbury Road, Holland Park, and elsewhere. She,
+too, had been intelligent, intellectual and very musical. From Frederick
+Leighton's little parties, where Joachim or Norman Neruda played to a
+chosen few, the beautiful Mrs. Mortimer and her delightful husband were
+seldom missing. They were prominent members of that sort of family party
+which made the "Monday Pops" for years a social as well as an artistic
+function. And their small, but exquisite house in Berkeley Square, now
+inherited by their daughter, was famous for its "winter evenings," at
+which might be met the _creme de la creme_ of the intellectual and
+artistic worlds, and at which no vulgarian, however rich and prominent,
+was ever to be seen.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield, quite instinctively and naturally, had carried on the
+family tradition; at first with her husband, Arthur Mansfield, one of
+the most cultivated and graceful members of their "set," and after his
+death alone. She was well off, had a love of beauty and comfort, but a
+horror of display, and knew everyone she cared to know, without having
+the vaguest idea who was, or was not, included in "the smart set."
+Having been brought up among lions, she had never hunted a lion in her
+life, though she had occasionally pulled the ears of one, or stroked its
+nose. She had been, and was, the intimate friend of many men and women
+who were "doing things" in the world. But she had never felt within
+herself the power to create anything original, and was far too
+intelligent, far too aristocratic in mind, to struggle impotently to be
+what she was not meant to be, or to fight against her own clearly seen
+limitations.
+
+Unlike Mrs. Mansfield in this respect Charmian struggled, and her mother
+knew it.
+
+On the following evening, when Charmian and her mother were dining
+together before going to Max Elliot's, she said rather abruptly:
+
+"Why didn't Mr. Elliot invite us to dinner to-night, do you think?"
+
+"Why should he have invited us?"
+
+"Well, perhaps it wasn't necessary. But surely it would have been quite
+natural."
+
+"Probably he wanted to prepare the new note for you."
+
+"Why should I require preparation?"
+
+"The new note!"
+
+"Why should the new note require preparation against me?"
+
+"I said for you. Possibly we may find out this evening. Besides Delia is
+in a rest cure as usual. So there is no hostess."
+
+Delia was Max Elliot's wife, a graceful nonentity who, having never done
+a stroke of work in her life, was perpetually breaking down, and being
+obliged to rest expensively under the supervision of fashionable
+doctors. She was now in Hampstead, enclosed in a pale green chamber,
+living on milk and a preparation called "Marella," and enjoying
+injections of salt water. She was also being massaged perpetually by a
+stout young woman from Sweden, and was deprived of her letters. "No
+letters!" was a prescription which had made her physician celebrated.
+
+"Oh, the peace of it!" Mrs. Elliot was faintly murmuring to the athletic
+masseuse, at the very moment when Charmian said:
+
+"There very seldom is a hostess. Poor Max Elliot!"
+
+"He's accustomed to it. And Delia must be doing something. This time she
+may be cured. Life originally issued from the sea, they say."
+
+"Near Margate, I suppose. What a mystery existence is!"
+
+"Are you going to be tiresome to-night?"
+
+"No, I won't, I won't. But if he plays his Te Deum I know I shall sleep
+like a tired child."
+
+"I don't suppose he will."
+
+"I feel he's going to."
+
+"Then why were you so anxious to go?"
+
+"I don't like to be left out of things. No one does."
+
+"Except the elect. How thoughtful of you to dress in black!"
+
+"Well, dearest, you are always in white. And I love to throw up my
+beautiful mother."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield put an arm gently round her as they left the dining-room.
+
+"You could make any mother be a sister to you."
+
+Just before ten their motor glided up to the Elliots' green door in
+Cadogan Place.
+
+Max Elliot was the very successful senior partner of an old-established
+stockbroking firm in the City. This was a fact, so people had to accept
+it. But acceptance was made difficult by his almost strangely
+unfinancial appearance and manner. Out of the City he never spoke of the
+City. He was devoted to the arts, and especially to music, of which he
+had a really considerable knowledge. All prominent musicians knew him.
+He was the friend of _prime donne_, a pillar of the opera, an ardent
+frequenter of all the important concerts. Where Threadneedle Street came
+into his life nobody seemed to know. Nevertheless, his numerous clients
+trusted him completely as a business man. And more than one singer,
+whose artistic temperament had brought her--or him, as the case might
+be--to the door of the poorhouse, had reason to bless Max Elliot's
+shrewd business head and generous industry in friendship. He had a good
+heart as well as a fine taste, and his power of criticism had not
+succeeded in killing his capacity for enthusiasm.
+
+"_He's_ not begun yet!" murmured Charmian to her mother, as the butler
+led them sedately down a rather long hall, past two or three doors, to
+the music-room which Elliot had built out at the back of his house.
+
+"I never heard that he was going to begin at all. We haven't come here
+for a performance, but to make an acquaintance."
+
+Charmian twisted her lips, and the butler opened the door and announced
+them.
+
+At the end of the room, which was panelled with wood and was high, by a
+large open fireplace, Max Elliot was sitting with Paul Lane and two
+other people, a woman and a young man. The woman was large and broad,
+with brown hair, reckless hazel eyes, and a nose and mouth which
+suggested a Roman emperor. She looked about thirty-five. In her large
+ears, which were set very flat against her head, there were long,
+diamond earrings, and diamonds glittered round her neck. She was
+laughing when the Mansfields came in, and went on laughing while Max
+Elliot went to receive them.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has just come," he said. "Paul has been dining."
+
+"And--the other?" murmured Charmian, with a hushed air of awed
+expectation which was not free from a hint of mockery.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield sent her a glance of half-humorous rebuke.
+
+"Claude Heath," answered Elliot.
+
+"How wonderful he is."
+
+"Charmian, don't be tiresome!" observed her mother, as they went toward
+the fire.
+
+The two men got up, and Charmian had an impression of height, of a bony
+slimness that was almost cadaverous, of irregular features, rather high
+cheek-bones, brown, very short hair, and large, enthusiastic and
+observant eyes that glanced almost piercingly at her, and quickly looked
+away.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney remained in her armchair, moved her shoulders, and said in
+a rather deep, but not disagreeable voice:
+
+"Mr. Heath and I are hearing all about 'Marella.' It builds you up if
+you are a skeleton and pulls you down if you are enormous, as I am. It
+makes you sleep if you suffer from insomnia, and if you have the
+sleeping sickness it wakes you up. Dr. Curling has patented it, and
+feeds his patients on nothing else. Delia is living entirely on it, and
+is to emerge looking seventeen and a female Sandow. Mr. Heath is longing
+to try it."
+
+She had held out a powerful hand to the new arrivals, and now turned
+toward the composer, who stood waiting to be introduced.
+
+"Oh, but no, please!" said Heath, speaking quickly and almost anxiously,
+with a certain naivete that was attractive, but that did not suggest
+simplicity, but rather great sensitiveness of mind. "I never take quack
+medicines or foods. I have no need to. And I think they're all invented
+to humbug us."
+
+Max Elliot took him by the arm.
+
+"I want to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Mansfield."
+
+He paused and added:
+
+"Mr. Claude Heath--Miss Mansfield."
+
+Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes--Heath had
+shaken hands quickly--were over. She looked across the room, and saw her
+mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that
+he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in
+that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from
+liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint
+sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man
+admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his
+favor.
+
+Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted.
+
+As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years,
+and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on
+the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many
+people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about
+him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether
+he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested
+her.
+
+Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost
+emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not
+handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness
+which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his
+whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from
+his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather
+thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.
+His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite
+free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut,
+reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere,
+combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and
+manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.
+
+He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly
+on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious
+intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how
+she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.
+
+"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.
+
+"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."
+
+"Was boxing?"
+
+"Boxing!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in
+Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."
+
+Lane smiled with his mouth.
+
+"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species,
+but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This
+one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the
+truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that
+it is so."
+
+Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:
+
+"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames
+say."
+
+This time Lane really smiled.
+
+"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well,
+Max, what is it?"
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney wants you."
+
+"I always want him. I swim in his irony and can't sink, like a tourist
+in the Dead Sea."
+
+"What a left-handed compliment!"
+
+"A right-handed one would bore you to death, and my aim in life is--"
+
+"To avoid being bored. How often do you succeed in your aim?"
+
+"Whenever I am with you in this delightful house."
+
+"It is delightful," said Charmian to her host. "But why? Of course it is
+beautiful. But that's not all. It's personal. Perhaps that's it."
+
+She got up, and walked slowly away from the fire, very naturally, with a
+gesture, just touching her soft cheek and fluttering her fingers toward
+the glow, as if she were too hot. Max Elliot accompanied her.
+
+"And all the lovely music that has sounded here," she continued,
+"perhaps lingers silently in the air, and, without being aware of it, we
+feel the vibrations."
+
+She sat down on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a
+low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a different
+voice:
+
+"Shall we hear any of his music to-night?"
+
+"I believe now we may."
+
+"Why--now?"
+
+Elliot looked toward Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Because of mother, you mean?"
+
+"He likes her."
+
+"Anyone can see that."
+
+After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:
+
+"He's evidently very difficile for an unknown man."
+
+"No, it isn't that at all. If you ever know him well, you will
+understand."
+
+"What?" she asked with petulance.
+
+"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves,"
+he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney,
+delightful though she is."
+
+"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn't want even to ask me."
+
+"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney
+to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so
+clever and artistic--though she's ignorant of music--over the whole
+thing, that--well, here she is."
+
+"And here I am!"
+
+"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.
+
+He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over
+the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:
+
+"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When
+she looked at him I could see at once that she made him feel
+transparent."
+
+"Poor thing! Tell me, do you enjoy very much protecting all the
+sensitive artistic temperaments that come into this room? Do you enjoy
+arranging the cotton-wool wadding so that there may be no chance of a
+nasty jar, to say nothing of a breakage?"
+
+He pursed his rather thick lips, that smiled so easily.
+
+"When the treasure is a treasure, genuinely valuable, I don't mind it. I
+feel then that I am doing worthy service."
+
+"You really are a dear, you know!" she said, with a sudden change, a
+melting. "It was good of you to ask me, when you didn't want to."
+
+She leaned a little toward him, with one light hand palm downward on the
+cushion of the sofa, and her small, rather square chin thrust forward in
+a way that made her look suddenly intense.
+
+"I'll try not to be like Mrs. Shiffney. I'll try not to make him feel
+transparent."
+
+"I'm not sure that you could," he said, smiling at her.
+
+"How horrid of you to doubt my powers! Why, why will nobody believe I
+have anything in me?"
+
+She brought the words out with a force that was almost vicious. As she
+said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes
+travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been
+speaking to him of her, had been making some assertion about her. For he
+seemed to look at her with inquiry.
+
+When Charmian turned away her eyes from his she added to Max Elliot:
+
+"But what does it matter? Because people, some people, can't see a
+thing, that doesn't prove that it has no existence. And I don't really
+care what people think of me."
+
+"This--to your old friend!"
+
+"Yes. And besides, I expect one must possess to discover."
+
+Her voice was almost complacent.
+
+"You deal in enigmas to-night."
+
+"One ought to carry a light when one goes into a cave to seek for gold."
+
+But Elliot would not let her see that he had from the first fully
+understood her impertinence.
+
+"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of
+the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."
+
+"I'm not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."
+
+"There's Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don't think we shall have it
+to-night."
+
+"Then I'll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again assuming a
+semblance of awe.
+
+The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others.
+She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were
+almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close
+to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the
+world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with
+discrimination and with enthusiasm.
+
+"Of course he's a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to
+some artist. "But _what_ a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he
+called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in
+Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a
+criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of
+nudging the air in one's direction so that one feels it in one's side.
+Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a
+biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"
+
+"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."
+
+"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"
+
+"I went to the Royal College at Kensington Gore."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney, who was very cosmopolitan, had a flat in Paris, and was
+more often out of England than in it, slightly raised her eyebrows.
+
+"You haven't studied in France or Germany?"
+
+Heath began to look rather uncomfortable, and slightly self-conscious.
+
+"No," he said quickly.
+
+He paused, then as if with a decided effort he added:
+
+"I think the training a student gets at the Royal College is splendid."
+
+"Of course it is," said Max Elliot, heartily.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney shook her shoulders.
+
+"I'm sure it's quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice,
+gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled.
+"Don't think I'm criticizing it. Only I'm so dreadfully un-English, and
+I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah
+bow-wow, you know!"
+
+At this point in the conversation Charmian tranquilly interposed.
+
+"Mr. Heath," she said, slightly protruding her chin, "when you've done
+with my only mother"--Mrs. Shiffney's lips tightened ever so little--"I
+want you to be very nice to me."
+
+"Please tell me," said Heath, with the almost anxious eagerness that
+seemed to be characteristic of him.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield fixed her blazing eyes on her daughter, slightly drawing
+down her gray eyebrows.
+
+"Well, it's rather a secret."
+
+Charmian glanced round at the others, then she added:
+
+"It's about the Nutcracker."
+
+"The Nutcracker!"
+
+Heath puckered up his forehead.
+
+"Yes." She moved a little, and looked at the chair not far from the fire
+on which she had sat when first she came into the room. "I care rather
+for boxing. Now"--she went slowly toward the chair, followed by Heath,
+"what I want to know, and what you can tell me, is this"--she sat down,
+and leaned her chin on her upturned palm--"on _present_ form do you
+believe the Nutcracker is up to Conky Ja-ky Joe?"
+
+As Claude Heath sat down to reply to this question, Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Conky Jarky Joe! I thought I was _dans le mouvement_ up to my
+dog-collar, but I know nothing about the phenomenon. Where does it
+belong to?"
+
+"Wonderland," said Elliot, in a gravely romantic voice.
+
+"That's the land I've never seen, although I've had the yacht for so
+many years."
+
+"Nor I!" said Paul Lane. "I don't believe it exists, or we must have
+been there. We have both been everywhere."
+
+"Tell the poor things about it," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Then Adelaide can
+get up steam on _The Wanderer_ and realize her dreams."
+
+"But Mr. Elliot told me he met you there, and I remember distinctly his
+saying the fight was on between those two pets of the ring," said
+Charmian plaintively, after a certain amount of negation from Claude
+Heath.
+
+"Yes, but I'm sure he didn't tell you I was an authority on boxing
+form."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"No, indeed!"
+
+"But you want to be?"
+
+"I shouldn't mind. But it isn't my chief aim in life."
+
+Charmian was silent. She leaned back, taking her chin from her hand, and
+at last said gravely:
+
+"It isn't _that_, then?"
+
+"That--what?" exclaimed Heath, looking at her and away from her.
+
+"That you want. It's something else. Because you know you want a very,
+very great deal of something."
+
+"Oh, a good many of us do, I suppose."
+
+"I don't think I do. I'm quite satisfied with my life. I have a good
+mother, a comfortable home. What should a properly-brought-up English
+girl, who has been educated at Brighton, want more?"
+
+"I'm very glad indeed to know that a Brighton education stands its
+receiver in such good stead in the after years, very glad indeed!"
+
+"You are laughing at me. And that's unchristian."
+
+"Oh, but--but you were laughing at me!"
+
+Despite Heath's eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner,
+Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only
+the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now
+she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance
+with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely
+knew why she had done so. But she half thought, only half because of her
+self-respect, that she had been a little afraid of him, and so had
+instinctively caught up some armor, put a shield in front of her. Was
+she really impressed by a well-spoken-of Te Deum? She glanced at Heath
+inscrutably, as only woman can, and knew that she was not. It was the
+man himself who had caused her to fall into what she already thought of
+as a mistake. There was in Heath something that almost confused her. And
+she was not accustomed to be confused.
+
+"I've made a bad beginning," she almost blurted out, not able to escape
+from artifice, yet speaking truth. "And I'm generally rather good at
+beginnings. It's so easy to take the first step, I think, despite that
+silly saying which, of course, I'm not going to quote. It's when one is
+getting to know a person really well that difficulties generally begin."
+
+"Do they?"
+
+"Yes, because it's then that very reserved people begin hurriedly
+building barricades, isn't it? I ask you, because I'm not at all
+reserved."
+
+"But how should I know any better than you?"
+
+"You mean, when you're so unreserved, too? No, that's true."
+
+Heath's eyes troubled Charmian. She was feeling with every moment less
+at ease in his companionship and more determined to seem at ease. Being
+generally self-possessed, she had a horror of slipping into shyness and
+so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to
+speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had
+seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a
+heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was
+to-night! Desperation seized her.
+
+"We must leave the question to the reserved," she said. "Poor things! I
+always pity them. They can never taste life as you and I and our kind
+are able to. We are put here to try to know and to be known. I feel sure
+of that. So the reserved are for ever endeavoring to escape their
+destiny. No wonder they are punished!"
+
+"I am not sure that I entirely agree with your view as to the reason why
+we are put here," observed Heath, without a trace of obvious sarcasm.
+Nevertheless, the mere words stung Charmian's almost childish
+self-conceit.
+
+"But I wasn't claiming to have pierced the Creator's most secret
+designs!" she exclaimed. "I was simply endeavoring to state that it can
+scarcely be natural for men and women to try to hide all they are from
+each other. I think there's something ugly in hiding things; and
+ugliness can't be meant."
+
+"Ugliness is certainly not meant," said Heath, and for the first time
+she felt as if she were somewhere not very far from him. "Except very
+often by man. Isn't it astonishing that men created Venice and that men
+have now put steam launches in the canals of Venice!"
+
+Venice! Charmian seized upon the word, mentally leaped upon and clung to
+the city in the sea. From that moment their conversation became easier,
+and gradually Charmian began to recover from her strange social
+prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt.
+Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the
+talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their
+intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of
+course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments
+must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is
+Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about?
+Charmian said that to herself afterward, and was amazed at her own
+vulgarity of mind. Ah, yes! That was what she had disliked in Claude
+Heath--his faculty of making her feel almost vulgar-minded,
+vulgar-intellected! She coined horrible bastard words in her efforts to
+condemn him. But all that was later on, when she had even said
+good-night to her only mother.
+
+Their tete-a-tete was broken by Mrs. Shiffney's departure to a reception
+at the Ritz. She must surely have been disappointed in the musician;
+but, if so, she was too clever to show it. And she was by way of being a
+good-natured woman and seldom seemed to think ill of anybody. "I have so
+many sins on my own conscience," she sometimes said, "that I decline to
+see other people's. I want them to be blind to mine. Sin and let sin is
+an excellent rule in social life." She seldom condemned anyone except a
+bore.
+
+"If you ever pay a call, which I doubt," she said to Claude Heath as she
+was going, "I'm in Grosvenor Square. The Red Book will tell you."
+
+She looked at him with her almost insolently self-possessed and careless
+eyes, and added:
+
+"Perhaps some day you'll come on the yacht and show me the course to set
+for Wonderland. Mr. Elliot says you know it. And of course we all want
+to. I've been everywhere except there."
+
+"I doubt if a yacht could take us there," said Heath, smiling as if to
+cover something grave or sad.
+
+A piercing look again came into Mrs. Shiffney's eyes.
+
+"I really hope I shall see you in Grosvenor Square," she said.
+
+Without giving him time to say anything more she went away, accompanied
+from the room by Max Elliot, walking carelessly and looking very
+powerful and almost outrageously self-possessed.
+
+Within the music-room there was a moment's silence. Then Paul Lane said:
+
+"Delightful creature!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Adelaide is delightful. And why? She always
+thinks of herself, lives for herself. She wouldn't put herself out for
+anyone. I've known her for years and would never go to her in a
+difficulty or trust her with a confidence. And yet I delight in her. I
+think it's because she's so entirely herself."
+
+"She's a darling!" said Lane. "She's so preposterously human, in her
+way, and yet she's always distinguished. And she's so clever as well as
+so ignorant. I love that combination. Even on a yacht she never seems
+to have a bad day."
+
+Charmian looked at Claude Heath, who was silent. She was wondering
+whether he meant to call in Grosvenor Square, whether he would ever set
+sail with Mrs. Shiffney on _The Wanderer_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When Max Elliot came back they gathered round the fire, no longer split
+up into duets, and the conversation was general. Heath joined in
+frequently, and with the apparent eagerness which was evidently
+characteristic of him. He had facility in speaking, great quickness of
+utterance, and energy of voice. When he listened he suggested to
+Charmian a mind so alive as to be what she called "on the pounce." He
+had an odd air of being swayed, carried away, by what those around him
+were saying, even by what they were thinking, as if something in his
+nature demanded to acquiesce. Yet she fancied that he was secretly
+following his own line of thought with a persistence that was almost
+cold.
+
+Lane led the talk at first, and displayed less of his irony than usual.
+He was probably not a happy man, though he never spoke of being unhappy.
+His habitual expression was of discontent, and he was too critical of
+life, endeavor, character, to be easily satisfied. But to-night he
+seemed in a softer mood than usual. Perhaps he had an object in seeming
+so. He was a man very curious in the arts. Elliot, who knew him well,
+was conscious that something in Heath's personality had made a strong
+impression upon him, and thought he was trying to create a favorable
+atmosphere in the hope that music might come of it. If this was so, he
+labored in vain. And soon doubtless he knew it. For he, too, pleaded
+another engagement, and, like Mrs. Shiffney, got up to go.
+
+Directly the door shut behind him Charmian was conscious of relief and
+excitement. She even, almost despite herself, began to hope for a Te
+Deum; and, hoping, she found means to be wise. She effaced herself, so
+she believed, by withdrawing a little into a corner near the fire,
+holding up her Conder fan open to shield her face from the glow, and
+taking no part in the conversation, while listening to it with a pretty
+appearance of dreaminess. She was conscious of her charming attitude,
+of the line made by her slender upraised arm, and not unaware of the
+soft and almost transparent beauty the light of a glowing fire gives to
+delicate flesh. Nevertheless, she really tried, in a perhaps
+half-hearted way, to withdraw her personality into the mist. And this
+she did because she knew well that her mother, not she, was en rapport
+with Claude Heath.
+
+"I'm out of it," she said to herself, "and mother's in it."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had been a restraint, Lane had been a restraint. It would
+be dreadful if she were the third restraining element. She would have
+liked to be triumphantly active in bringing things about. Since that was
+evidently quite out of the question she was resolved to go to the other
+extreme.
+
+"My only chance is to be a mouse!" she thought.
+
+At least she would be a graceful mouse.
+
+She gazed at the delicate figures on her Conder fan. They, those three a
+little way from her, were talking now, really talking.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield was speaking of the endeavor of certain Londoners to
+raise the theater out of the rut into which it had fallen, and to make
+of it something worthy to claim the attention of those who did not use
+it merely for digestive purposes. She related a story of a disastrous
+theater-party which she had once joined, and which had been arranged by
+an aspiring woman with little sense of fitness.
+
+"We dined with her first. She had, somehow, persuaded Burling, the
+Oxford historian, Mrs. Hartford, the dear poetess who never smiles, and
+her husband, and Cummerbridge, the statistician, to be of the party.
+After dinner where do you think she took us?"
+
+"To the Oxford?" said Elliot, flinging his hands round his knee and
+beginning to smile.
+
+"To front row stalls at the Criterion, where they were giving a
+knockabout farce called _My Little Darling_ in which a clergyman was put
+into a boiler, a guardsman hidden in a linen cupboard, and a penny
+novelette duchess was forced to retreat into a shower-bath in full
+activity. I confess that I laughed more than I had ever done in my life.
+I sat between Burling, who looked like a terrified hen, and Mr.
+Hartford, who was seriously attentive from beginning to end, and kept
+murmuring, 'Really! Really!' And I had the poetess's sibylline profile
+in full view. I was almost hysterical when it was over. As we were
+coming out Mr. Hartford said to his wife, 'Henrietta, I'm glad we came.'
+She rolled an eye on him and answered, with tears in the voice, 'Why?'
+'It's a valuable lesson. We now know what the British public needs.' Her
+reply was worthy of her."
+
+"What was it?" said Elliot, eagerly.
+
+"'There are many human needs, Gabriel, which it is criminal to gratify.'
+Burling went home in a four-wheeler. Cummerbridge had left after the
+first act--a severe attack of neuralgia in the right eye."
+
+Elliot's full-throated laugh rang through the room. Heath was smiling,
+but almost sadly, Charmian thought.
+
+"Perhaps it was _My Little Darling_ which brought about the attempt at
+better things you were speaking of," he said to Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Ah, but their prophet is not mine!" she answered.
+
+An almost feverish look of vitality had come into her face, which was
+faintly pencilled by the fingers of sorrow.
+
+"Sometimes I think I hate the disintegrating drama more than I despise
+the vulgar idiocies which, after all, never really touch human life,"
+she continued. "No doubt it is sheer weakness on my part to be affected
+by it. But I am. Only last week Charmian and I saw the play that
+they--the superior ones--are all flocking to. The Premier has seen it
+five times already. I loathed its cleverness. I loathed the element of
+surprise in it. I laughed, and loathed my own laughter. The man who
+wrote it would put cap and bells on St. Francis of Assisi and make a
+mock of OEdipus."
+
+She paused, then, leaning forward, in a low and thrilling voice she
+quoted, "'For we are in Thy hand; and man's noblest task is to help
+others by his best means and powers.'"
+
+Claude Heath gazed at her while she was speaking, and in his eyes
+Charmian, glancing over her fan, saw what she thought of as two torches
+gleaming.
+
+"I came out of the theater," continued Mrs. Mansfield, "and I confess it
+with shame, feeling as if I should never find again the incentive to a
+noble action, as if the world were turned to chaff. And yet I had
+laughed--how I had laughed!"
+
+Suddenly she began to laugh at the mere recollection of something in the
+play.
+
+"The wretch is terribly clever!" she exclaimed. "But he seems to me
+destructive."
+
+"Well, but--" began Elliot. "Some such accusation has been brought
+against many really great men. The Empress Frederick told a friend of
+mine that no one who had not lived in Germany, and observed German life
+closely, could understand the evil spread through the country by
+Wagner's _Tristan_."
+
+"Then the fault, the sin if you like, was in the hearers," said Heath,
+almost with excitement.
+
+He got up and stood by the fire.
+
+"Wagner was a builder. I believe Germany is the better for a _Tristan_,
+and I believe we should be the better for an English _Tristan_. But I
+doubt if we gain essentially by the drama in cap and bells."
+
+Elliot, who was fond of defending his friends, came vigorously to the
+defense of the playwright, to whom he was devoted and whose first nights
+he seldom missed. In the discussion which followed Charmian saw more
+clearly how peculiarly in tune her mother's mind was with Heath's.
+
+"This is the beginning of a great intimacy," she said to herself. "One
+of mother's great intimacies."
+
+And, for the first time she consciously envied her mother, consciously
+wished that she had her mother's brains, temperament, and unintentional
+fascination. The talk went on, and presently she drifted into it, took
+her small part in it. But she felt herself too brainless, too ignorant
+to be able to contribute to it anything of value. Her usually happy and
+innocent self-conceit has deserted her, with all her audacities. She was
+oddly subdued, was almost sad.
+
+"How old is he really?" she thought more than once as she looked at
+Claude Heath.
+
+There was no mention of music, and at last Mrs. Mansfield got up to go.
+
+As they said good-night she looked at Heath and remarked:
+
+"We shall meet again?"
+
+He clasped her hand, and answered, slightly reddening:
+
+"Oh, I hope so! I do hope so!"
+
+That was all. There was no mention of the Red Book, of being at home on
+Thursdays, no "If you're ever near Berkeley Square," etc. All that was
+unnecessary. Charmian touched a long-fingered hand and uttered a cold
+little "Good-night." A minute more and her mother and she were in the
+motor gliding through damp streets in the murky darkness.
+
+After a short silence Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"Well, Charmian, you escaped! Are you very thankful?"
+
+"Escaped!" said a rather plaintive voice from the left-hand corner of
+the car.
+
+"The dreaded Te Deum."
+
+"Is he a musician at all? I believe Max Elliot has been humbugging us."
+
+"He warned you not to expect too much in the way of hair."
+
+"It isn't that. How old do you think he is?"
+
+"Certainly not thirty."
+
+"What did you tell him about me?"
+
+"About you? I don't remember telling him anything."
+
+"Oh, but you did, mother!"
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"I know you did, when I was sitting near the piano with Max Elliot."
+
+"Perhaps I did then. But I can't remember what it was. It must have been
+something very trifling."
+
+"Oh, of course I know that!" said Charmian almost petulantly.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but
+she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the
+putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject
+quietly, and they were soon at home.
+
+Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs.
+Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom
+went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her.
+
+"I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the
+door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when
+she was alone.
+
+Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her.
+
+"Wonderful mother!"
+
+"What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!"
+
+"Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and
+hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry
+child."
+
+"And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a
+little."
+
+"No, not to-night, you darling!"
+
+Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went
+away up the stairs between white walls to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the
+beginning of one of mother's great intimacies."
+
+Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short
+time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends.
+She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a
+special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young
+man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that
+each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion
+to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art.
+Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other,
+perhaps the two reserves clung together.
+
+These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the
+other that was hidden from the gaze of the world.
+
+A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the
+other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this--Charmian was not included
+in it.
+
+This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was
+incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone,
+against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm,
+chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was
+wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They
+spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the
+house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had
+there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now
+she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her
+own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her
+mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships.
+Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.
+
+Or was she gently, subtly, almost mysteriously excluded from it by
+Claude Heath?
+
+She chose to think so. And there were moments in which he chose to think
+that she obstinately declined to accept him as her mother accepted him,
+because she disliked him, was perhaps jealous of his intimacy with Mrs.
+Mansfield.
+
+All this was below the surface. Charmian seemed friendly with Heath, and
+he, generally, at ease with her. But when he was alone with Mrs.
+Mansfield he was a different man. At first she thought little of this.
+She attributed it to the fact that Heath had a reserved nature and that
+she happened to hold a key which could unlock it, or unlock a room or
+two of it, leaving, perhaps, many rooms closed. But, being not only a
+very intelligent but a delicately sensitive woman, she presently began
+to think that there was some secret antagonism between her child and
+Heath.
+
+This pained her. She even considered whether she ought not to put an end
+to her intimacy with Heath. She had grown to value it. She was incapable
+of entering into a sentimental relation with any man. She had loved
+deeply, had had her beautiful summer. It had died. The autumn was upon
+her. She regretted. Often her heart was by a grave, often it was beyond,
+seeking, like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the
+golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not
+repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in
+people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of
+becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to
+her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.
+
+Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had
+not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered
+Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life,
+sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which
+another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him.
+She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.
+
+But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life, had the
+first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in
+Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps,
+troubled or irritated Heath.
+
+Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield
+had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house
+near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she
+had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of
+his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never
+mentioned her dead husband to him.
+
+Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the
+musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had
+heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked:
+"Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his
+compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed
+"No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary
+fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he
+added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to
+hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with
+his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored
+by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he
+had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he
+owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical
+development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his
+greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in
+persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which
+crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield
+taught him not to attempt any more persuasion. He realized that his
+first instinct had been right. The plant must grow in darkness. But he
+was always being carried away by artistic enthusiasms, and had an
+altruistic desire to share good things. And he dearly loved "a musical
+find." He had a certain name as a discoverer of talent, and there's so
+much in a name. The lives that have been changed, moulded, governed by a
+hastily conferred name!
+
+Mrs. Mansfield was inclined to believe that Heath had invited her to
+tea with the intention of at last submitting his talent to her opinion.
+They had sometimes talked together of music, but much oftener of books,
+character, people, national movements, topics of the day. As she went to
+her bedroom to dress for her expedition, she felt a certain hesitation,
+almost a disinclination to go. To go was to draw a step or two nearer to
+Heath, and so, perhaps, to retreat a step or two from her child. To-day
+the fact that Charmian and Heath did not quite "hit it off together"
+vexed her spirit, and the slight mystery of their relation troubled her.
+As she went down to get into the motor she was half inclined to speak to
+Heath on the subject. She was quite certain that she would not speak to
+Charmian.
+
+The month was February, and by the time Mrs. Mansfield reached Mullion
+House evening was falling. A large motor was drawn up in front of the
+house, and as Mrs. Mansfield's chauffeur sounded a melodious chord the
+figure of a smartly dressed woman walked across the pavement and stepped
+into it. After an instant of delay, caused by this woman's footman, who
+spoke to her at the window, the car moved off and disappeared rapidly in
+the gathering darkness.
+
+"Was that Adelaide?" Mrs. Mansfield asked herself as she got out.
+
+She was not certain, but she thought the passing figure had looked like
+Mrs. Shiffney's.
+
+The door of Mullion House stood open, held by a thin woman with very
+large gray eyes, who smiled at Mrs. Mansfield and made a slight motion,
+almost as if she mentally dropped a curtsey, but physically refrained
+out of respect for London ways.
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am, he is in! He's expecting you."
+
+The emphasis on the last word was marked. Mrs. Mansfield looked at this
+woman, toward whom at once she felt friendly.
+
+"There's some here and there that would bother him to death, I'm sure,
+if they was let!" continued the woman, closing the little front door
+gently. "But it will be a pleasure to him to see you. We all knows
+that!"
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it!" responded Mrs. Mansfield, liking this
+unconventional but very human servant. "Mr. Heath has spoken of my
+coming, then?"
+
+"I should think so, ma'am. This way, if you please!"
+
+Mrs. Searle, Heath's cook-housekeeper, crossed the little dimly lit hall
+and walked quickly down a rather long and narrow passage.
+
+"He's in the studio, ma'am," she remarked over her narrow shoulder,
+sharply turning her head. "Fan is with him."
+
+"Who's Fan? A dog?"
+
+"My little girl, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Not knowing you were there, when the other lady went I sends her in to
+him for company as he wasn't working. 'Run, Fan!' says I. 'Go and cheer
+Mr. Heath up, there's a good girl!' I says. I knows very well there's
+nothing like a child to put you right after you've been worried. They're
+so simple, aren't they, ma'am? And we're all simple, I b'lieve, at
+'eart, though we're ashamed to show it. I'm sure I don't know why!"
+
+As she concluded she opened a door and ushered Mrs. Mansfield into the
+composer's workroom.
+
+At the far end of it, in a flicker of firelight, Mrs. Mansfield saw him
+stooping down over a very fair and Saxon-looking child of perhaps three
+years old, whose head was thickly covered with short yellow hair
+inclined to be curly, and who was dressed in a white frock with an
+almost artful blue bow in the front. As Mrs. Mansfield came in the child
+was holding up to Heath a small naked doll of a rather blurred
+appearance, and was uttering some explanatory remarks in the uneven but
+arresting voice that seems peculiar to childhood.
+
+"Mrs. Mansfield, if you please, sir!" said Mrs. Searle. Then, with a
+change of voice: "Come along, Fan! And bring Masterman with you, there's
+a good girl! We must get on his clothes or he'll catch cold." (To Mrs.
+Mansfield.) "You'll excuse her, ma'am, but she's that nat'ral, clothes
+or no clothes it's all one to her."
+
+Fan turned round, holding Masterman by one leg and staring with bright
+blue eyes at Mrs. Mansfield. Her countenance expressed a dignified
+inquiry combined, perhaps, with a certain amount of very natural
+surprise at so unseemly an interruption of her strictly private
+interview with Claude Heath and Masterman. Her left thumb mechanically
+sought the shelter of her mouth, and it was obvious that she was "sizing
+up" Mrs. Mansfield with all the caution, if not suspicion, of the female
+nature in embryo.
+
+Heath took her gently by the shoulder as he came forward, smiling, and
+propelled her slowly toward the middle of the large dim room.
+
+"Welcome!" he said, holding out his hand. "Yes, Fantail, I quite
+understand. He's been sick and now he's getting better. Go with mother!"
+
+Fan was exchanged for Mrs. Mansfield and vanished, speaking slowly and
+continuously about Masterman's internal condition and "the new lydy,"
+while Mrs. Mansfield took off her fur coat and looked around her and at
+Heath.
+
+"I didn't kiss her," she said, "because I think it's a liberty to kiss
+one of God's creatures at first sight without a special invitation."
+
+"I know--I know!"
+
+Heath seemed restless. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes,
+always full of a peculiar vitality, looked more living even than usual.
+He glanced at Mrs. Mansfield, then glanced away, almost guiltily, she
+thought.
+
+"Do come and sit down by the fire. Would you like a cushion?"
+
+"No, thank you! What a nice old settle!"
+
+"Yes, isn't it? I live in this room. Alling, the painter, built it for
+his studio. The other rooms are tiny."
+
+"What a delightful servant you have!"
+
+"Mrs. Searle--yes. She's a treasure! Humanity breaks out of her whatever
+the occasion. And my goodness, how she understands men!"
+
+He laughed, but the laugh sounded slightly unnatural.
+
+"Fantail's delightful, too!" he added.
+
+"What is her real name?"
+
+"Fanny. I call her Fantail." He paused. "Well, because I like her, I
+suppose."
+
+"I know."
+
+There was a moment of silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the
+room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in,
+perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very
+handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but
+there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books,
+not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which
+furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and
+papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. The
+piano was open, and there was more music on it. The armchairs were well
+worn but comfortable, and looked "sat in." Over the windows there were
+dim orange-colored curtains that looked old but not shabby. On the floor
+there were some rather good and very effective Oriental rugs. The only
+flowers in the room were bright yellow tulips, grouped together in a
+mass on an oak table a long way from the fire. Opposite to the piano
+there was a large ebony crucifix mounted on a stand, and so placed that
+anyone seated at the piano faced it. The room was lit not strongly by
+oil lamps with shades. A few mysterious oil paintings, very dark in
+color, hung on the walls between the bookcases. Mrs. Mansfield could not
+discern their subjects. On the high wooden mantelpiece there were a few
+photographs, of professors and students at the Royal College of Music
+and of a serious and innocent-looking priest in black coat and round
+white collar.
+
+To Mrs. Mansfield the room suggested a recluse who liked to be cosy,
+who, perhaps, was drawn toward mystery, even mysticism, and who loved
+the life of the brain.
+
+"And you've a garden?" she asked, breaking the little pause.
+
+"The size of a large pocket-handkerchief. I'm not at all rich, you know.
+But I can just afford my little house and to live without earning a
+penny."
+
+A woman servant, not Mrs. Searle, came in with tea and retreated,
+walking very softly and slowly. She looked almost rustic.
+
+"That's my only other servant, Harriet," said Heath, pouring out tea.
+
+"There's something very un-Londony in it all," said Mrs. Mansfield,
+again looking round, almost with a puzzled air.
+
+"That's what I try for. I'm fond of London in a way, but I can't bear
+anything typical of London in my home."
+
+"It is quite a home," she said; "and the home of a worker. One gets
+weary of being received in reception-rooms. This is a retreat."
+
+Heath looked at her with his bright almost too searching and observant
+eyes.
+
+"I wonder," he said almost reluctantly, "whether--may I talk about
+myself to-day?" he interrupted himself.
+
+"Do, if you like to."
+
+"I think I should."
+
+"Do, then."
+
+"I wonder whether a man is a coward to raise up barriers between himself
+and life, whether it is a mistake to have a retreat, as you rightly call
+this room, this house, and to spend the greater part of one's time alone
+in it? But"--he moved restlessly--"the real question is whether one
+ought to let oneself be guided by a powerful instinct."
+
+"I expect one ought to."
+
+"Do you? Oh, you're not eating anything!"
+
+"I will help myself."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney wouldn't agree with you."
+
+"No."
+
+"Didn't--didn't you see her? She went just before you came."
+
+"I saw someone. I thought it might be Adelaide. I wasn't sure."
+
+"It was she. I hadn't asked her to come and wasn't expecting her."
+
+He stopped, then added abruptly:
+
+"It was wonderfully kind of her to come, though. She is kind and clever,
+too. She has fascination, I think...."
+
+"I'm sure she has."
+
+"And yet, d'you know, there's something in her, and in lots of people I
+might get to know, I suppose, through her and Max Elliot, that I--well,
+I almost hate it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well, whenever I come across one of them by chance I seem to hear a
+voice repeating, 'To-morrow we die--to-morrow we die--to-morrow we die.'
+And I seem to see something inside of them with teeth and claws
+fastening on pleasure. It's--it's like a sort of minotaur, and it gives
+me horrors. And yet I might go to it."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield said nothing for a moment. She had finished her cup of
+tea, and now, with a little gesture, refused to have another.
+
+"It's quite true. There is the creature with teeth and claws, and it is,
+perhaps, horrible. But it's so sad that I scarcely see anything but its
+sadness."
+
+"You are kinder than I."
+
+He leaned forward.
+
+"D'you know, I think you're the kindest human being I ever met, except
+one, that priest up there on the mantelpiece."
+
+"Forgive me," she said, making allowance for herself to-day because of
+Heath's evident desire to talk intimately, a desire which she believed
+she ought to help, "but are you a Roman Catholic?"
+
+"Oh, no! I wish I was!"
+
+"But I suppose you can't be?"
+
+"Oh, no! I suppose I'm one of those unsatisfactory people whose soul and
+whose brain are not in accord. That doesn't make for inward calm or
+satisfaction. But I can only hope for better days."
+
+There was something uneasy in his speech. She felt the strong reserve in
+him always fighting against the almost fierce wish to be unreserved with
+her.
+
+"They will come, surely!" she said. "If you are quite sincere, sincere
+with yourself always and sincere with others as often as is possible."
+
+"You're right about its not being possible to be always sincere with
+others."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"They simply wouldn't let you!"
+
+"No," he said. "I feel as if I could be rather sincere with you
+sometimes."
+
+"Specially to-day, perhaps."
+
+"Yes, I think so. We do get on, don't we?"
+
+"Yes, we do."
+
+"I often wonder why. But we do. I'll move the table if you've really
+finished."
+
+He put the table away and sat down on the settle beside her, at the far
+end. And he turned, leaning his back against the upright end, and
+stretching one arm along the wooden top, on which his long fingers
+restlessly closed.
+
+"I was sorry I went to Max Elliot's till you came into the room," he
+said. "And ever since then I've been partly very glad."
+
+"But only partly?"
+
+"Yes, because I've always had an instinctive dread of getting drawn in."
+
+"To the current of our modern art life. I'm sure you mean that."
+
+"I do. And of course Elliot is in the thick of it. Mrs. Shiffney's in
+it, and all her lot, which I don't know. And that fellow Lane is in it
+too."
+
+"And I suppose I am in it with Charmian."
+
+Heath looked at the floor. Ignoring Mrs. Mansfield's remark, he
+continued:
+
+"I have some talent. It isn't the sort of talent to win popularity.
+Fortunately, I don't desire--in fact, I'm very much afraid of
+popularity. But as I believe my talent is--is rather peculiar,
+individual, it might easily become--well, I suppose I may say the rage
+in a certain set. They might drop me very soon. Probably they would--I
+don't know. But I have a strong feeling that they'd take me up violently
+if I gave them a chance. That's what Max Elliot can't help wanting. He's
+such a good fellow, but he's a born exploiter. Not in any nasty way, of
+course!" Heath concluded hastily.
+
+"I quite understand."
+
+"And, I don't want to seem conceited, but I see there's something about
+me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have
+never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day
+she called. She wants me to go with her on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise."
+
+"To Wonderland?"
+
+Heath shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"In the Mediterranean, I believe."
+
+"Doesn't that tempt you?"
+
+"Yes, terribly. But I flatly refused to go. But she knew I was tempted.
+It's only curiosity on her part," he added, with a sort of hot, angry
+boyishness. "She can't make me out, and I didn't call. That's why she
+asked me."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield mentally added a "partly" to the last sentence.
+
+"You're very much afraid of exposing yourself--or is it your talent?--to
+the influence of what we may as well call the world," she said.
+
+"I suppose one's talent is oneself, one's best self."
+
+"Perhaps so. I have none. You know best about that. I expect you are
+right in being afraid."
+
+"You don't think I'm merely a rather absurd coward and egoist?"
+
+"Oh, no! But some people--many, I think--would say a talent is meant to
+be used, to be given to the light."
+
+"I know. But I don't think the modern world wants mine. I"--he
+reddened--"I always set words from the Bible nearly or from the
+Prayer-Book."
+
+Smiling a little, as if saving something by humor, he added:
+
+"Not the _Song of Solomon_."
+
+"But don't the English--"
+
+He stopped her.
+
+"Good heavens! I know you are thinking of the Handel Festival and
+_Elijah_ in the provinces!" he exclaimed. "I know you are!"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I should like to play you one or two of my things," he said
+impulsively. "Then you'll see at once."
+
+He went toward the piano. She sat still. She was with the striking
+unreserve of the reserved man when he has cast his protector or his
+demon away. With his back to her Heath turned over some music, moved a
+pile of sheets, set them down on the floor under the piano, searched.
+
+"Oh, here it is!"
+
+[Illustration: "'THIS IS THE LAST THING I'VE DONE'"--_Page 41_]
+
+He grasped some manuscript, put it on the music-stand, and sat down.
+
+"This is the last thing I've done. The words are taken from the
+sixteenth chapter of Revelation--'And I heard a great voice out of the
+temple saying to the seven angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials
+of the wrath of God upon the earth."' And so on."
+
+With a sort of anger his hands descended and struck the keys. Speaking
+through his music he gave Mrs. Mansfield indications of what it was
+expressing.
+
+"This is the sea. 'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea,
+and it became as the blood of a dead man.... The fourth angel poured out
+his vial upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with
+fire.... The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River
+Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings
+of the East might be prepared.'"
+
+The last words which Heath had set were those in the fifteenth verse of
+the chapter--"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and
+keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame."
+
+When he had finished he got up from the piano with a flushed face and,
+again speaking in a boyish and almost naive manner, said quickly:
+
+"There, that gives you an idea of the sort of thing I do and care about
+doing. For, of course, I never will attempt any subject that doesn't
+thoroughly interest me."
+
+He stood for a moment, not looking toward Mrs. Mansfield; then, as if
+struggling against an inward reluctance, he again sat down on the
+settle.
+
+"Have you orchestrated it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I've just finished the orchestration."
+
+"Surely you want to hear it given with voices and the orchestra?
+Frankly, I won't believe you if you say you don't."
+
+"I do."
+
+The reluctance seemed to fade out of him.
+
+"The fact is I'm torn between the desire to hear my things and a mighty
+distaste for publicity."
+
+He sprang up.
+
+"If you'll allow me I'll just give you an idea of my Te Deum. And then
+I'll have done."
+
+He went once more to the piano.
+
+When he was sitting beside her again Mrs. Mansfield felt shy of him.
+After a moment she said:
+
+"You are sincere in your music?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He did not seem specially anxious to get at her exact opinion of his
+work, and this fact, she scarcely knew why, pleased Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"I had two or three things done at the College concerts," Heath
+continued. "I don't think they were much liked. They were considered
+very clever technically. But what's that? Of course, one must conquer
+one's means or one can't express oneself at all."
+
+"And now you work quite alone?"
+
+"Yes. I've got just a thousand a year of my own," he said abruptly.
+
+"You are independent, then."
+
+"Yes. It isn't a great deal. Of course, I quite realize that the sort of
+thing I do could never bring in a penny of money. So I've no money
+temptation to resist in keeping quiet. There isn't a penny in my
+compositions. I know that."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield thought, "If he were to get a mystical libretto and write
+an opera!" But she did not say it. She felt that she would not care to
+suggest anything to Heath which might indicate a desire on her part to
+see him "a success." In her ears were perpetually sounding the words,
+"and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the Kings of the
+East might be prepared." They took her away from London. They set her in
+the midst of a great strangeness. They even awoke in her an almost
+riotous feeling of desire. What she desired she could not have said
+exactly. Some form of happiness, that was all she knew. But how the
+thought of happiness stung her soul at that moment! She looked at Heath
+and said:
+
+"I quite understand about Mrs. Shiffney now."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have the dangerous gift of a very peculiar and very powerful
+imagination. I think your music might make you enemies."
+
+Heath looked pleased.
+
+"I'm glad you think that. I know exactly what you mean."
+
+They sat together on the settle and talked for more than an hour. Mrs.
+Mansfield's feeling of shyness speedily vanished, was replaced by
+something maternal with which she was much more at ease.
+
+Mrs. Searle let her out. She had said good-bye to Heath in the studio
+and asked him not to come to the front door.
+
+"Good-night, Mrs. Searle!" she said, with a smile. "I hope I haven't
+stayed too long?"
+
+"No, indeed, ma'am. I'm sure you'd ado him good. He do like them that's
+nat'ral. But he don't like to be bothered. And there's people that do
+keep on, ma'am, isn't there?"
+
+"I daresay there are."
+
+"Specially with a young gentleman, ma'am. I always do say it's the women
+runs after the men. More shame to us, ma'am."
+
+"Has Fan begun yet?"
+
+Mrs. Searle blushed.
+
+"Well, ma'am, really I don't know. But she's awfully put out if anyone
+interrupts her when she's with Mr. Heath."
+
+"I must take care what I'm about."
+
+"Oh, ma'am, I'm sure--"
+
+The motor moved away from the little old house. As Mrs. Mansfield looked
+out she saw a faint gleam in the studio. Involuntarily she listened,
+almost strained her ears. And she murmured, "And the water thereof was
+dried up, that the way of the Kings of the East might be prepared."
+
+The gleam was lost in the night. She leaned back and found herself
+wondering what Charmian would have thought of the music she had just
+heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she
+was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an
+Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs.
+Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was
+still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of
+the cosmopolitan type; Mrs. Shiffney derived her peculiar and attractive
+look of high breeding and her completely natural manner from him. From
+her mother she had received the nomadic instinct which kept her
+perpetually restless, and which often drove her about the world in
+search of the change and diversion which never satisfied her. Lady
+Manning had been a feverish traveller and had written several careless
+and clever books of description. She had died of a fever in Hong-Kong
+while her husband was in Scotland. Although apparently of an unreserved
+nature, he had never bemoaned her loss.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had a husband, a lenient man who loved comfort and who was
+fond of his wife in an altruistic way. She and he got on excellently
+when they were together and quite admirably when they were parted, as
+they very often were, for yachting made Mr. Shiffney feel "remarkably
+cheap." As he much preferred to feel expensive he had nothing to do with
+_The Wanderer_ unless she lay snug in harbor. His hobby was racing. He
+was a good horseman, disliked golf, and seldom went out of the British
+Isles, though he never said that his own country was good enough for
+him. When he did cross the Channel he visited Paris, Monte Carlo,
+Homburg, Biarritz, or some place where he was certain to be in the midst
+of his "pals." The strain of wildness, which made his wife uncommon and
+interesting, did not exist in him, but he was rather proud of it in her,
+and had been heard to say more than once, "Addie's a regular gipsy," as
+if the statement were a high compliment. He was a tall, well-built,
+handsome man of fifty-two, with gray hair and moustache, an agreeable
+tenor voice, which was never used in singing, and the best-cut clothes
+in London. Although easily kind he was thoroughly selfish. Everybody had
+a good word for him, and nobody, who really knew him, ever asked him to
+perform an unselfish action. "That isn't Jimmy's line" was their
+restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to
+Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And
+Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a
+sensible fellow.
+
+Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her
+husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
+
+"What's up, Addie?" he asked, with the sympathy he never withheld from
+her. "Another gown gone wrong?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney shook her powerful head, on which was a marvellous black
+hat crowned with a sort of factory chimney of stiff black plumes.
+
+Mr. Shiffney lit a cigar.
+
+"Poor old Addie!" he said. He leaned down and stroked her shoulder. "I
+wish you could get hold of somebody or something that'd make you happy,"
+he remarked. "I'm sure you deserve it."
+
+His wife dried her tears and sniffed two or three times almost with the
+frankness of a grief-stricken child.
+
+"I never shall!"
+
+"Why not, Addie?"
+
+"There's something in me--I don't know! I should get tired of anyone who
+didn't get tired of me!"
+
+She almost began to cry again, and added despairingly:
+
+"So what hope is there? And I _do_ so want to enjoy myself! I wonder if
+there ever has been a woman who wanted to enjoy herself as much as I
+do?"
+
+Mr. Shiffney blew forth a cloud of smoke, extending the little finger of
+the hand which held his cigar.
+
+"We all want to have a good time," he observed. "A first-rate time. What
+else are we here for?"
+
+He spoke seriously.
+
+"We are here to keep things going, I s'pose--to keep it up, don't you
+know? We mustn't let it run down. But if we don't enjoy ourselves down
+it goes. And that doesn't do, does it?"
+
+He flicked the ash from his cigar.
+
+"What's the special row this time?" he continued, without any heated
+curiosity, but with distinct sympathy.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked slightly more cheerful. She enjoyed telling things
+if the things were closely connected with herself.
+
+"Well, I want to start for a cruise," she began. "I can't remain for
+ever glued to Grosvenor Square. I must move about and see something."
+
+She had just been for a month in Paris.
+
+"Of course. What are we here for?" observed her husband.
+
+"You always understand! Sit down, you old thing!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney sat down, gently pulling up his trousers.
+
+"And the row is," she continued, shaking her shoulders, "that I want
+Claude Heath to come and he won't. And, since he won't, he's really the
+only living man I want to have on the cruise."
+
+"Who is he?" observed Mr. Shiffney. "I've never heard of him. Is he one
+of your special pals?"
+
+"Not yet. I met him at Max's. He's a composer, and I want to know what
+he's like."
+
+"I expect he's like all the rest."
+
+"No, he isn't!" she observed decisively.
+
+"Why won't he come? Perhaps he's a bad sailor."
+
+"He didn't even trouble himself to say that. He was in such a hurry to
+refuse that he didn't bother about an excuse. And this afternoon he
+called, when I was in, and never asked for me, only left cards and
+bolted, although I had been to his house to ask him to come on _The
+Wanderer_."
+
+"Afraid of you, is he?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. He's never been among _us_."
+
+"Poor chap! But surely that's a reason for him to want to get in?"
+
+"Wouldn't you think so? Wouldn't anyone think so? The way I'm bombarded!
+But he seems only anxious to keep out of everything."
+
+"A pose very likely."
+
+"I don't believe it is."
+
+"I leave it to you. No one sharper in London. Is he a gentleman--all
+that sort of thing?"
+
+"Oh, of course!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney pulled up his trousers a little more, exposing a pair of
+striped silk socks which emerged from shining boots protected by white
+spats.
+
+"To be sure. If he hadn't been he'd have jumped at you and _The
+Wanderer_."
+
+"Naturally. I shan't go at all now! What an unlucky woman I always am!"
+
+"You never let anyone know it."
+
+"Well, Jimmy, I'm not quite a fool. Be down on your luck and not a soul
+will stay near you."
+
+"I should think not. Why should they? One wants a bit of life, not to
+hear people howling and groaning all about one. It's awful to be with
+anyone who's under the weather."
+
+"Ghastly! I can't stand it! But, all the same, it's a fearful _corvee_
+to keep it up when you're persecuted as I am."
+
+"Poor old Addie!"
+
+Mr. Shiffney threw his cigar into the grate reflectively and lightly
+touched his moustaches, which were turned upward, but not in a military
+manner.
+
+"Things never seem quite right for you," he continued.
+
+"And other women have such a splendid time!" she exclaimed. "The
+disgusting thing is that he goes all the while to Violet Mansfield."
+
+"She's dull enough and quite old too."
+
+"No, she isn't dull. You're wrong there."
+
+"I daresay. She doesn't amuse me."
+
+"She's not your sort."
+
+"Too feverish, too keen, brainy in the wrong way. I like brains, mind
+you, and I know where they are. But I don't see the fun of having them
+jumped at one."
+
+"He does, apparently, unless it's really Charmian."
+
+"The girl? She's not bad. Wants to be much cleverer than she is, of
+course, like pretty nearly all the girls, except the sporting lot; but
+not bad."
+
+"Jimmy"--Mrs. Shiffney's eyes began once more to look audacious--"shall
+I ask Charmian Mansfield to come on the yacht?"
+
+"You think that might bring him? Why not ask both of them?"
+
+"No; I won't have the mother!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I won't!"
+
+"The best of reasons, too."
+
+"You understand us better than any man in London."
+
+She sat reflecting. She was beginning to look quite cheerful.
+
+"It would be rather fun," she resumed, after a minute. "Charmian
+Mansfield, Max--if he can get away--Paul Lane. It isn't the party I'd
+thought of, but still--"
+
+"Which of them were you going to take?"
+
+"Never mind."
+
+"I don't. And where did you mean to go?"
+
+"I told him to the Mediterranean."
+
+"But it wasn't!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! Where can one go? That's another thing. It's always
+the same old places, unless one has months to spare, and then one gets
+bored with the people one's asked. Things are so difficult."
+
+"One place is very much like another."
+
+"To you. But I always hope for an adventure round the corner."
+
+"I've been round a lot of corners in my time, but I might almost as well
+have stuck to the club."
+
+"Of course _you_ might!"
+
+She got up.
+
+"I must think about Charmian," she said, as she went casually out of the
+room.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney turned the new idea over and over in her restless mind,
+which was always at work in a desultory but often clever way. She could
+not help being clever. She had never studied, never applied herself,
+never consciously tried to master anything, but she was quick-witted,
+had always lived among brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen
+everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all the books
+that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures
+which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and,
+moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or
+strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own
+line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon
+became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle.
+Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal
+feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she
+generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not
+condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick
+of it." And very soon a great many of her friends, and their friends,
+were sick of it, too. She was a quicksand because she was a singularly
+complete egoist. But very few people who met her failed to come under
+the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse,
+swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally,
+in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly,
+did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her
+gaiety and _joie de vivre_ and for the energy with which she pursued
+enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned.
+She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. With her time
+she was less generous. She was not of those who are charitable with
+their golden hours. "I can't be bothered!" was the motto of her life.
+And wise people did not bother her.
+
+She had seen that, for a moment, Claude Heath had been tempted by the
+invitation to the cruise. A sudden light had gleamed in his eyes, and
+her swift apprehension had gathered something of what was passing in his
+imagination. But almost immediately the light had vanished and the quick
+refusal had come. And she knew that it was a refusal which she could not
+persuade him to cancel unless she called someone to her assistance. His
+austerity, which attracted her whimsical and unscrupulous nature, fought
+something else in him and conquered. But the something else, if it could
+be revived, given new strength, would make a cruise with him, even to
+all the old places, quite interesting, Mrs. Shiffney thought. And any
+refusal always made her greedy and obstinate. "I _will_ have it!" was
+the natural reply of her nature to any "You can't have it!"
+
+She often acted impulsively, hurried by caprices and desires, and that
+same evening she sent the following note to Charmian:
+
+                                               GROSVENOR SQUARE,
+                                                      _Thursday._
+
+     DEAR CHARMIAN,--You've never been on the yacht, though
+     I've always been dying to have you come. I've been glued to London
+     for quite a time, and am getting sick of it. Aren't you? Always the
+     same things and people. I feel I must run away if I can get up a
+     pleasant party to elope with me. Will you be one? I thought of
+     starting some time next month on _The Wanderer_ for a cruise, to
+     the Mediterranean or somewhere. I don't know yet who'll tuck in,
+     but I shall take Susan Fleet to play chaperon to us and the crew
+     and manage things. Max Elliot may come, and I thought of trying to
+     get your friend, Mr. Heath, though I hardly know him. I think he
+     works too hard, and a breeze might do him good. However, it's all
+     in the air. Tell me what you think about it. Love to the beautiful
+     mother.--In tearing haste, Yours,
+                                               ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY.
+
+"Why has she asked me?" said Charmian to herself, laying this note down
+after reading it twice.
+
+She had always known Mrs. Shiffney, but she had never before been asked
+to go on a cruise in the yacht. Mrs. Shiffney had always called her
+Charmian, as she called Mrs. Mansfield Violet. But there had never been
+even a hint of genuine intimacy between the girl and the married woman,
+and they seldom met except in society, and then only spoke a few casual
+and unmeaning words. They had little in common, Charmian supposed,
+except their mutual knowledge of quantities of people and of a certain
+social life.
+
+Claude Heath on _The Wanderer_!
+
+Charmian took the note to her mother.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has suddenly taken a fancy to me, Madretta," she said.
+"Look at this!"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield read the note and gave it back.
+
+"Do you want to go?" she asked, looking at the girl, not without a still
+curiosity.
+
+Charmian twisted her lips.
+
+"I don't know. You see, it's all very vague. I should like to be sure
+who's going. I think it's very reckless to take any chances on a yacht."
+
+"Claude Heath isn't going."
+
+Charmian raised her eyebrows.
+
+"But has she asked him?"
+
+"Yes. And he's refused. He told me so on Monday."
+
+"You're quite sure he won't go?"
+
+"He said he wasn't going."
+
+Charmian looked lightly doubtful.
+
+"Shall I go?" she said. "Would you mind if I did?"
+
+"Do you really want to?"
+
+"I don't think I care much either way. Why has she asked me?"
+
+"Adelaide? I daresay she likes you. And you wouldn't be unpleasant on a
+yacht, would you?"
+
+"That depends, I expect. You'd allow me to go?"
+
+"If I knew who the rest of the party were to be--definitely."
+
+"I won't answer till to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield did not feel sure what was Charmian's desire in the
+matter. She did not quite understand her child. She wondered, too, why
+Mrs. Shiffney had asked Charmian to go on the yacht, why she implied
+that Claude Heath might make one of the party when he had refused to go.
+It occurred to Mrs. Mansfield that Adelaide might mean to use Charmian
+as a lure to draw Heath into the expedition. But, if so, surely she
+quite misunderstood the acquaintanceship between them. Heath was
+her--Mrs. Mansfield's--friend. How often she had wished that Charmian
+and he were more at ease together, liked each other better. It was odd
+that Adelaide should fall into such a mistake. And yet what other
+meaning could her note have? She wrote as if the question of Heath's
+going or not were undecided.
+
+Was it undecided? Did Adelaide, with her piercing and clever eyes, see
+more clearly into Heath's nature than Mrs. Mansfield could?
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had an extraordinary capacity for getting what she wanted.
+The hidden tragedy of her existence was that she was never satisfied
+with what she got. She wanted to draw Claude Heath out of his retirement
+into the big current of life by which she and her friends were buoyantly
+carried along through changing and brilliant scenes. His refusal had no
+doubt hardened a mere caprice into a strong desire. Mrs. Mansfield
+realized that Adelaide would not leave Heath alone now. The note to
+Charmian showed an intention not abandoned. But why should Adelaide
+suppose that Heath's acceptance might be dependent on anything done by
+Charmian?
+
+Mrs. Mansfield knew well, and respected, Mrs. Shiffney's haphazard
+cleverness, which, in matters connected with the worldly life, sometimes
+almost amounted to genius. That note to Charmian gave a new direction to
+her thoughts, set certain subtleties of the past which had vaguely
+troubled her in a new and stronger light. She awaited, with an interest
+that was not wholly pleasant, Charmian's decision of the morrow.
+
+Charmian had been very casual in manner when she came to her mother with
+the surprising invitation. She was almost as casual on the following
+morning when she entered the dining-room where Mrs. Mansfield was
+breakfasting by electric light. For a gloom as of night hung over the
+Square, although it was ten o'clock.
+
+"Have you been thinking it over, Charmian?" said her mother, as the girl
+sat languidly down.
+
+"Yes, mother--lazily."
+
+She sipped her tea, looking straight before her with a cold and dreamy
+expression.
+
+"Have you been active enough to arrive at any conclusion?"
+
+"I got up quite undecided, but now I think I'll say 'Yes,' if you don't
+mind. When I looked out of the window this morning I felt as if the
+Mediterranean would be nicer than this. There's only one thing--why
+don't you come, too?"
+
+"I haven't been asked."
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Adelaide's too modern to ask mothers and daughters together," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, smiling.
+
+"Would you go if she asked you?"
+
+"No. Well, now the thing is to find out what the party is to be. Write
+the truth, and say you'll go if I know who's to be there and allow you
+to go. Adelaide knows quite well she has lots of friends I shouldn't
+care for you to yacht with. And it's much better to be quite frank about
+it. If Susan Fleet and Max go, you can go."
+
+"I believe you are really the frankest person in London. And yet people
+love you--miracle-working mother!"
+
+Charmian turned the conversation to other subjects and seemed to forget
+all about _The Wanderer_. But when breakfast was over, and she was alone
+before her little Chippendale writing-table, she let herself go to her
+excitement. Although she loved, even adored her mother, she sometimes
+acted to her. To do so was natural to Charmian. It did not imply any
+diminution of love or any distrust. It was but an instinctive assertion
+of a not at all uncommon type of temperament. The coldness and the
+dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great
+uncertainty.
+
+On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly
+understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told
+her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had
+supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs. Shiffney had invited her
+not for herself, but as a means of getting hold of Heath. Charmian was
+positive of that. Months ago, in Max Elliot's music-room, the girl had
+divined the impression made by Heath on Mrs. Shiffney, had seen the
+restless curiosity awake in the older woman. She had even noticed the
+tightening of Mrs. Shiffney's lips when she, Charmian, had taken Heath
+away from the little group by the fire, with that "when you've quite
+done with my only mother," which had been a tiny slap given to Mrs.
+Shiffney. And she had been sure that Mrs. Shiffney meant to know Heath.
+She had a great opinion of Mrs. Shiffney's social cleverness and
+audacity. Most girls who were much in London society had. She did not
+really like Mrs. Shiffney, or want to be intimate with her, but she
+thoroughly believed in her flair, and that was why the note had stirred
+in Charmian excitement and uncertainty. If Mrs. Shiffney thought she
+saw something, surely it was there. She would not take shadow for
+substance.
+
+But might she not fire a shot in the dark on the chance of hitting
+something?
+
+"Why did she ask me instead of mother?" Charmian said to herself again
+and again. "If she had got mother to go Claude Heath would surely have
+gone. Why should he go because I go?"
+
+And then came the thought, "She thinks he may, perhaps thinks he will.
+Will he? Will he?"
+
+The note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it
+came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even
+despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost
+reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs.
+Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the
+party. And then what would Heath do?
+
+As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs.
+Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."
+
+She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned
+herself to a period of patience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+By return there came a note hastily scribbled:
+
+"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.--A.
+S."
+
+But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing
+more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother,
+who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they
+never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and
+then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them.
+Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in,
+composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house,
+and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a
+conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he
+disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push
+everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one
+afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional
+acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or
+three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came
+into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.
+
+"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.
+
+He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by
+playing before sitting down to work.
+
+"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard
+you playing, and knew you were in."
+
+"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"
+
+"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."
+
+Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out
+at the piano.
+
+"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.
+
+"In the drawing-room, sir."
+
+"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."
+
+He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely
+ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it,
+looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon
+him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world
+with which he had nothing to do.
+
+"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with
+a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."
+
+Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly
+stiff.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and--"
+
+He touched her powerful hand.
+
+"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too
+bad of me."
+
+He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man
+as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her.
+Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position,
+her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified?
+No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally.
+He felt savage, but he felt flattered.
+
+"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.
+
+Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered
+chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.
+
+"May I give you some tea?"
+
+Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she
+regarded him as a boy.
+
+"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."
+
+"But really, I am--"
+
+"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I
+know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."
+
+"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with
+sudden reserve.
+
+"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little
+room! But you never sit in it."
+
+"Not often."
+
+"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."
+
+There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.
+
+"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said.
+"It's about the yacht."
+
+"I'm really so very sorry that--"
+
+"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that
+I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate
+the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may
+think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."
+
+"I am tempted."
+
+"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel
+just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet--she's a sort of
+chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course--Max
+Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps--if he can't come some charming man whom you'd
+delight in--and Charmian Mansfield."
+
+Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:
+
+"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."
+
+"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."
+
+"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."
+
+"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over
+to Sicily and Tunis."
+
+She saw his eyes beginning to shine.
+
+"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's
+rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could
+leave the yacht at Alexandria--"
+
+"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid
+cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."
+
+"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are
+not to enjoy life!"
+
+"It isn't that at all."
+
+"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought
+artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the
+whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I
+suppose _English_ artists are different. I often wonder whether they are
+wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the
+Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in
+Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do
+forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know
+it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the
+Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."
+
+She laughed and moved her shoulders.
+
+"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in
+the stream of life."
+
+"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are
+foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.
+
+She saw anger in his eyes.
+
+"Perhaps you are getting something--some sacred cantata--ready for one
+of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you
+mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands or Tunis.
+Besides, you'd get all the wrong sort of inspiration in such places. I
+shall never forget the beautiful impression I received at--was it
+Worcester?--once when I saw an English audience staggering slowly to its
+feet in tribute to the Hallelujah Chorus. I am sure you are writing
+something that will bring Worcester to its feet, aren't you?"
+
+He forced a very mirthless laugh.
+
+"I'm really not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us
+talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I
+feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I
+can't accept it, unfortunately for me."
+
+"_Mal-au-coeur?_"
+
+"Yes, yes. I don't think I'm a good sailor."
+
+"_Mal-au-coeur!_" she repeated, smiling satirically at him.
+
+"I'm in the midst of something."
+
+"The Puritan tradition?"
+
+"Perhaps it is that. Whatever it is, I suppose it suits me; it's in my
+line, so I had better stick to it."
+
+"You are bathing in the Ganges?"
+
+Her eyes were fixed upon him.
+
+"Poor Charmian Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?"
+
+Claude looked down.
+
+"I must leave that to you. I am sure you will have a very delightful
+party."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was looking the soul of careless good-nature,
+and quite irresistible, though very Roman.
+
+"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a
+solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll
+give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on
+Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No
+berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot,
+Paul Lane, and you--I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to
+me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really,
+though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get
+one!"
+
+Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but
+something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just
+then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of
+the world. As she got into her motor she said:
+
+"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"
+
+The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She
+was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He
+went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried
+to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in
+life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the
+spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at
+least with ardor--a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly,
+absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction
+had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive.
+Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney thought
+of him? But there was within him--and he knew it--a surely weak
+inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he
+was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature
+side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be
+what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept
+him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left
+the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening
+darkness.
+
+He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.
+
+How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her
+persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential
+position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown
+man, and she had troops of friends, battalions of acquaintances. She
+could get anyone she liked to go on the yacht, and she wanted him. It
+was flattering to his masculine vanity. He felt that there was something
+in him which stretched out and caught at people, without intention on
+his part, which grasped and held them. It was not his talent, he told
+himself, for he kept that in the dark. It was himself. Although he was
+less conceited than the average Englishman of talent, for a few minutes
+he braced his legs and had the cordial conquering sensation.
+
+He had till Sunday to decide.
+
+How absurd to say that to himself when he had decided, told Mrs.
+Shiffney, and even told Mrs. Mansfield, his great friend! There was
+really no reason why he should send any note on Sunday. He had refused
+again and again. That ought to be enough for Mrs. Shiffney, for any
+woman. But, of course, he would write, lest he should seem heedless or
+impolite.
+
+What a bore that strong instinct within him was, that instinct which
+kept him, as it were, moored in a sheltered cove when he might ride the
+great seas, and possibly with buoyant success! Perhaps he was merely a
+coward, a rejector of life's offerings.
+
+Well, he had till Sunday.
+
+Claude was a gentleman, but not of aristocratic birth. His people were
+Cornish, of an old and respected Cornish family, but quite unknown in
+the great world. They were very clannish, were quite satisfied with
+their position in their own county, were too simple and too well-bred to
+share any of the vulgar instincts and aspirations of the climber.
+Comfortably off, they had no aching desire to be richer than they were,
+to make any splash. The love of ostentation is not a Cornish vice. The
+Heaths were homely people, hospitable, warm-hearted, and contented
+without being complacent. Claude had often felt himself a little apart
+from them, yet he derived from them and inherited, doubtless, much from
+them of character, of sentiment, of habit. He was of them and not of
+them. But he liked their qualities well in his soul, although he felt
+that he could not live quite as they did, or be satisfied with what
+satisfied them.
+
+Although he had lived for some years in London he had never tried, or
+even thought of trying, to push his way into what are called "the inner
+circles." He had assiduously cultivated his musical talent, but never
+with a view to using it as a means of opening shut doors. He knew
+comparatively few people, and scarcely any who were "in the swim," who
+were written of in social columns, whose names were on the lips of the
+journalists and of the world. He never thought about his social position
+as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did
+not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the
+obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to
+climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of
+ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination
+toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the
+Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had been
+happy enough in his sheltered and perhaps rather selfish existence.
+Dwelling in the center of a great struggle for life, he had enjoyed it
+because he had had nothing to do with it. His own calm had been
+agreeably accentuated by the turmoil which surrounded and enclosed it.
+How many times had he blessed his thousand a year, that armor of gold
+with which fate had provided him! How often had he imagined himself
+stripped of it, realized mentally the sudden and fierce alteration in
+his life and eventually, no doubt, in himself that must follow if
+poverty came!
+
+He had a horror of the jealousies, the quarrels, the hatreds, the lies,
+the stabbings in the dark that make too often hideous, despicable, and
+terrible a world that should be very beautiful. During his musical
+education he had seen enough to realize that side by side with great
+talent, with a warm impulse toward beauty, with an ardor that counts
+labor as nothing, or as delight, may exist coldness, meanness, the
+tendency to slander, egoism almost inhuman in its concentration, the
+will to climb over the bodies of the fallen, the tyrant's mind, and the
+stony heart of the cruel. Art, so it seemed to Claude, often hardened
+instead of softening the nature of man. That, no doubt, was because
+artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers,
+conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that
+should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a
+cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with
+the torn feathers of the fallen.
+
+The many books which he had read dealing with the lives of great
+artists, sometimes their own autobiographies, had only confirmed him in
+his wish to keep out of the struggle. Such books, deeply interesting
+though they were, often made him feel almost sick at heart. As he read
+them he saw genius slipping, or even wallowing in pits full of slime.
+Men showered their gold out of blackness. They rose on strong pinions
+only to sink down below the level surely of even the average man. And
+angry passions attended them along the pilgrimage of their lives, seemed
+born and bred of their very being. Few books made Claude feel so sad as
+the books which chronicled the genius of men submitted to the conditions
+which prevail in the ardent struggle for life.
+
+He closed them, and was happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently
+humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the
+fate of the unknown man who does not wish to be known.
+
+But, of course, there was in him, as there is in almost every man of
+strong imagination and original talent, a restlessness like that of the
+physically strong man who has never tried and proved his strength in any
+combat.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had appealed to his restlessness, which had driven Claude
+forth into the darkness of evening and now companioned him along the
+London ways. He knew no woman of her type well, and something in him
+instinctively shrank from her type. As he had said to Mrs. Mansfield, he
+dreaded, yet he was aware that he might be fascinated by, the monster
+with teeth and claws always watchful and hungry for pleasure. And the
+voice that murmured, "To-morrow we die! To-morrow we die!" was like a
+groan in his ears. But now, as he walked, he was almost inclined to
+scold his imagination as a companion which led him into excesses, to
+rebel against his own instinct. Why should he refuse any pleasant
+temptation that came in his way? Why should he decline to go on the
+yacht? Was he not a prude, a timorous man to be so afraid for his own
+safety, not of body, but of mind and soul? Mrs. Shiffney's remarks about
+Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his
+armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take
+him on its current whither it would?
+
+He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he
+might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him. He
+fancied that he was one of those natures which cannot be half-hearted,
+which cannot easily mingle, arrange, portion out, take just so much of
+this and so much of that. The recklessness that looked out of Mrs.
+Shiffney's eyes spoke to something in him that might be friendly to it,
+though something else in him disliked, despised, almost dreaded it.
+
+He had answered. Yet on Sunday he must answer again. How he wished Mrs.
+Shiffney had not called upon him a second time! In her persistence he
+read her worldly cleverness. She divined the instability which he now
+felt within him. It must be so. It was so. The first time he had met her
+he had had a feeling as if to her almost impertinent eyes he were
+transparent. And she had evidently seen something he had supposed to be
+hidden, something he wished were not in existence.
+
+Her remarks about English musicians, her banter about the provincial
+festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to
+him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain
+so because of his way of life!
+
+Abruptly he became solicitous of opinion. He thought of Mrs. Mansfield,
+and wondered what had been her opinion of his music. Almost mechanically
+he crossed the broad road by the Marble Arch, turned into the windings
+of Mayfair, and made his way to Berkeley Square.
+
+"I'll ask her. I'll find out!" was his thought.
+
+He rang Mrs. Mansfield's bell.
+
+"Is Mrs. Mansfield at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Heath stepped in quickly. He still felt excited, uncertain of himself,
+even self-conscious under the eyes of the butler. There was no one in
+the drawing-room. As he waited he wondered whether Charmian was in the
+house, whether he would see her. And now, for the first time, he began
+to wonder also why Mrs. Shiffney had made so much of the fact that
+Charmian was to be on the yacht. He recalled her words, "Poor Charmian
+Mansfield! Whom can I get for her?" Had he been asked on Charmian's
+account? That seemed to him very absurd. She certainly disliked him.
+They were not en rapport. In the yacht they would be thrown together
+incessantly. He thought of the expression in Mrs. Shiffney's eyes and
+felt positive that she had pressed him to come for herself. But possibly
+she fancied he liked Charmian because he came so often to Berkeley
+Square. The cleverest woman, it seemed, made mistakes. But he could not
+quite understand Mrs. Shiffney's proceedings. If he did, after all, go
+on the yacht it would be rather amusing to study her. And Charmian?
+Heath said to himself that he did not want to study her. She was too
+uncertain, not without a certain fascination perhaps, but too ironic,
+too something. He scarcely knew what it was that he disliked, almost
+dreaded, in her. She was mischievous at wrong moments. The minx peeped
+up in her and repelled him. She watched him in surely a hostile way and
+did not understand him. So he was on the defensive with her, never quite
+at his ease.
+
+The door opened and Mrs. Mansfield came in. Heath went toward her and
+took her hands eagerly. This evening he felt less independent than he
+usually did, and in need of a real friend.
+
+"What is it?" she said, after a look at him.
+
+"Why should it be anything special?"
+
+"But it is!"
+
+He laughed almost uneasily.
+
+"I wish I hadn't a face that gives me away always!" he exclaimed.
+"Though to you I don't mind very much. Well, I wanted to ask you two or
+three things, if I may."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield sat down on her favorite sofa, with her feet on a stool.
+
+"Anything," she said.
+
+"Do you mind telling me exactly what you thought of my music the other
+evening? Did you--did you think it feeble stuff? Did you, perhaps, think
+it"--he paused--"provincial?" he concluded, with an effort.
+
+"Provincial!"
+
+Heath was answered, but he persisted.
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"I thought it alarming."
+
+"Alarming?"
+
+"Disturbing. It has disturbed me."
+
+"Disturbed your mind?"
+
+"Or my heart, perhaps."
+
+"But why? How?"
+
+"I'm not sure that I could tell you that."
+
+Heath sat down. When he was not composing or playing he sometimes felt
+very uncertain of himself, lacking in self-confidence. He often had
+moments when he felt not merely doubtful as to his talent, but as if he
+were less in almost every way than the average man. He endeavored to
+conceal this disagreeable weakness, which he suffered under and
+despised, but could not rid himself of; and in consequence his manner
+was sometimes uneasy. It was rather uneasy now. He longed to be
+reassured. Mrs. Mansfield found him strangely different from the man who
+had played to her, who had scarcely seemed to care what she thought,
+what anyone thought of his music.
+
+"I do wish you would try to tell me!" he said anxiously.
+
+"Why should you care what I think?" she said, almost as if in rebuke.
+
+"Perhaps my music is terrible rubbish!"
+
+"It certainly is not, or it could not have made a strong impression upon
+me."
+
+"It did really make a strong impression?"
+
+"Very strong."
+
+"Then you think I have something in me worth developing, worth taking
+care of?"
+
+"I am sure you have."
+
+"I wonder how I ought to live?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Is that what you came to ask me?"
+
+Her fiery eyes seemed to search him. She sat very still, looking
+intensely alive.
+
+"To-night I feel as if I didn't know, didn't know at all! You see, I
+avoid so many things, so many experiences that I might have."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Yes. I think I've done that for years. I know I'm doing it now."
+
+He moved restlessly.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney has asked me again to go yachting with her."
+
+"But I thought you had refused."
+
+"I did. But she has been again to-day. She says your daughter is going."
+
+"Charmian has been asked."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney said she had accepted the invitation."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now I'm to give my answer on Sunday."
+
+"You seem quite upset about it," she said, without sarcasm.
+
+"Of course it seems a small matter. People would laugh at me, I know,
+for worrying. But what I feel is that if I go with Mrs. Shiffney, or go
+to Max Elliot's parties, I shall very soon be drawn into a life quite
+different from the one I have always led. And I do think it matters very
+much to--to some people just how they live, whom they know well, and so
+on. Men say, of course, that a man ought to face the rough and tumble of
+life. And some women say a man ought to welcome every experience. I
+wonder what the truth is?"
+
+Still with her eyes on him, Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"Follow your instinct."
+
+"Can't one have conflicting instincts?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Then one's instinct may not be strong enough to make itself known."
+
+"I doubt that."
+
+"But I am a man, you a woman. Women are said to have stronger instincts
+than men."
+
+"Aren't you playing with your own convictions?"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+He stared at her, but for a moment his eyes looked unconscious of her.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney said something to me that struck me," he said presently.
+"She implied that experiences of all kinds are the necessary food for
+anyone who wishes to be at all a big artist. She evidently thinks that
+England has failed to produce great musicians because the English are
+hampered by tradition."
+
+"She thinks uncleanliness necessary to the producing of beauty perhaps!"
+
+"Ah, I believe you have put into words what I have been thinking!"
+
+"Is it wisdom to grope for stars in the mud?"
+
+"No, no! It can't be!"
+
+He was silent. Then he said:
+
+"St Augustine, and many others, went through mud to the stars though."
+
+"St. Francis didn't--if we are to talk of the saints."
+
+"I believe you could guide me."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield looked deeply touched. For an instant tears glistened in
+her eyes. Nevertheless, her next remark was almost sternly
+uncompromising.
+
+"Even if I could, don't let me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I want the composer of the music I heard at the little house to be very
+strong in every way. No, no; I am not going to try to guide you, my
+friend!"
+
+There was a sound in her voice as if she were speaking to herself.
+
+"I never met anyone so capable of comradeship--no woman, I mean--as
+you."
+
+"That's a compliment I like!"
+
+At this moment the door opened and Charmian came in, wrapped in furs,
+her face covered by a veil. When she saw Heath with her mother she
+pushed the veil up rather languidly.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Heath! We haven't seen you for ages. What have you been about?"
+
+"Nothing in particular."
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+"Take off that thick coat, Charmian, and come and talk to us."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+She unbuttoned the fur slowly. Claude helped her to take it off. As she
+emerged he thought, "How slim she is!" He had often before looked at
+girls and wondered at their slimness, and thought that it seemed part of
+their mystery. It both attracted and repelled him.
+
+"Are you talking of very interesting things?" she asked, coming toward
+the fire.
+
+"I hear you are going for a cruise with Mrs. Shiffney," said Claude,
+uneasily.
+
+"I believe I am. It would be rather nice to get out of this weather. But
+you don't mind it."
+
+"How can you know that?"
+
+"It's very simple, almost as simple as some of Sherlock Holmes's
+deductions. You have refused the cruise which I have accepted. I expect
+you were right. No doubt one might get terribly bored on a yacht, unable
+to get away from people. I almost wonder that I dared to say 'Yes!'"
+
+"Where are you going to sit, Charmian?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Dearest mother, I'm afraid I must go upstairs. I've got to try on coats
+and skirts."
+
+She turned toward Heath.
+
+"The voyage, you know. I wish you could have come!"
+
+She held out her thin hand, smiling. She was looking very serene, very
+sure of herself.
+
+"I'm to answer Mrs. Shiffney on Sunday," said Heath abruptly.
+
+Something in Charmian's voice and manner had made him feel defiant.
+
+"Oh, I thought you had answered! Is Sunday your day for making up your
+mind?"
+
+Before he could reply she went out of the room slowly, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+On the following Sunday night at ten o'clock Max Elliot gave one of his
+musical parties.
+
+Delia had long since emerged from her rest cure, but was still suffering
+severely from its after-effects. It had completely broken her down, poor
+thing. The large quantities of "Marella" which she had imbibed had
+poisoned the system. The Swedish massage had made her bulky. And the
+prohibition as to letters had so severely shaken her nerve ganglions
+that she had been forced to seek the strengthening air of an expensive
+Swiss altitude, from which she had only just returned by way of Paris,
+where she had been nearly finished off by the dressmakers. However,
+being a woman of courage, she was down in peach color, with a pale
+turquoise-blue waist-belt, to receive her guests and to help to make
+things cheery. And she devoured condolences with an excellent appetite.
+
+"Whatever you do, never touch 'Marella'!" she was saying in her quick,
+light voice as Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian came into the music-room.
+"It's poison. It turns everything to I forget what, but something that
+develops the microbes instead of destroying them. I nearly died of it.
+Ah, Violet! Don't let Charmian be massaged by a Swede. It will ruin her
+figure. I've had to starve in Switzerland, or I couldn't have got into
+any of my new gowns. There's nothing so fatal as a rest cure. It sets
+every nerve on edge. The terrible monotony, and not knowing whether
+those one loves are alive or dead, whether the Government's gone out, or
+if there's a new King, or anything. Quite unnatural! It unfits one to
+face life and cope with one's friends. But Max would make me. Dear old
+Max! He's such a faddist. Men are the real faddists. I'll tell you about
+a marvellous new Arab remedy presently. I heard about it in Paris. We
+are going to have a lot of music in a minute. Yes, yes!"
+
+She spoke rapidly, looking about the room and seldom hearing what was
+said to her. Perpetual society had destroyed in her all continuity of
+mind. Ever since she could remember she had forgotten how to listen. She
+wanted to see, hear, know everybody, everything. Her mind hovered on the
+horizon, her restless and pale-blue eyes sought the farthest corners of
+the chamber to see what was happening in them, while she spoke to those
+within a foot or two of her. She laughed at jokes she did not catch or
+want to catch. She replied to questions she had divined by the
+expression on a face while she was glancing over the head it belonged
+to. She asked for information and travelled away ere it was given. Yet
+many people liked her. She was one of those very fair and small women
+who always look years younger than almost anyone really is, was full of
+vague charm, was kind, not stupid, and a good little thing, had two
+children and was only concentrated when at the dressmaker's or trying on
+hats.
+
+Max was devoted to her and rejoiced in spoiling her. He was one of those
+men who like to have a butterfly in the room with them.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield never tried to talk to Delia in a crowd, and she and
+Charmian went on into the big room. It was already full of people, many
+of whom were sitting on chairs grouped about the dais on which was the
+piano, while others stood about, and still others looked down upon the
+throng from recessed balconies, gained from a hidden corridor with which
+the main staircase of the house communicated.
+
+Charmian saw Mrs. Shiffney not far off, talking and laughing with a
+great portrait painter, who looked like a burly farmer, and with a
+renowned operatic baritone, whose voice had left him in the prime of his
+life and who now gave singing lessons, and tried to fight down the
+genius which was in him and to which he could no longer give expression.
+He had a pale, large, and cruel face, and gray eyes that had become
+sinister since the disaster which had overtaken him. Near this group
+were three men, a musical critic, Paul Lane, and a famous English
+composer, prop and stay of provincial festivals. The composer was
+handsome, with merry eyes and a hearty laugh which seemed to proclaim
+"Sanity! Sanity! Sanity! Don't be afraid of the composer!" The critic
+was tall, gay, and energetic, and also looked--indeed, seemed to mean
+to look--a thorough good fellow who had a hatred of shams. Lane, pale
+and discontented, had an air of being out of place in their company.
+Pretty women were everywhere, and there were many young and very smart
+men. On a sofa close to Charmian a degagee-looking Duchess was telling a
+"darkie" story to a lively and debonair writer, who was finding his
+story to cap it while he listened and smiled. Just beyond them were two
+impertinent and picturesquely dressed girls, sisters, whom Charmian knew
+intimately and met at almost every party she went to. One of them, who
+wore gold laurel leaves in her dark hair, made a little face at
+Charmian, which seemed to express a satirical welcome and the promise of
+sarcasm when they should be near enough to talk. The other was being
+prettily absurd with an excellent match. Close to the piano stood a very
+beautiful woman dressed in black, without jewels or gloves, who had an
+exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She
+was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never
+smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name
+was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist,
+married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max
+Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of
+musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opera Comique, stood by
+him with her right hand on his arm, as if she wanted to interrupt him.
+She was deathly pale, with hair like the night, ebon, and a face almost
+as exaggeratedly expressive as a tragic pierrot's. People pointed her
+out as Millie Deans, a Southern American never yet heard in London. She
+spoke to Max Elliot, then looked round the room, with sultry, defiant
+and yet anxious eyes.
+
+As if in answer to Millie Deans's words, Max Elliot moved away with her,
+and took her through the throng to Mrs. Shiffney, who turned round with
+her movement of the shoulders as they came up. Charmian, watching, saw
+Mrs. Shiffney's gay and careless smile, the piercing light in her eyes
+as she looked swiftly at the singer, who faced her with a tragic and
+determined expression. The portrait painter stood by, with his rather
+protruding eyes fixed on Miss Deans.
+
+As Charmian glanced round at the crowd and spoke to one person and
+another she was seized again by her horror of being one of the unknown
+lives. She saw many celebrities. She yearned to be numbered among them.
+If she could even be as Mrs. Shiffney, an arbiter of taste, a setter of
+fashions in admiration; if she could see people look at her, as Millie
+Deans looked at Mrs. Shiffney, with the hard determination to win her
+over to their side in the battle of art, she thought she could be happy.
+But to be nobody, "that pretty little Charmian," "that graceful Charmian
+Mansfield, but she's not half as clever as her mother"! To-night she
+felt as if she could not bear it.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had turned away from the singer, and now her eyes rested
+on Charmian. She nodded and smiled and made a beckoning motion with her
+left hand. But at this moment a singer and composer, half Spanish, half
+nobody knew what, who called himself Ferdinand Rades, sat down before
+the piano with a lighted cigarette in his mouth and struck a few soft
+chords, looking about him with a sort of sad and languid insolence and
+frowning till his thick eyebrows came down to make a penthouse roof
+above his jet black eyes.
+
+"Hush--hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh--'sh--'sh! Monsieur
+Rades is going to sing."
+
+He bent to Rades.
+
+"What is it? Monsieur Rades will sing _Le Moulin_, and _Le Retour de
+Madame Blague_."
+
+There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way
+to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at
+Rades, who turned and stared at her. Then, taking the cigarette from his
+mouth, he sang _Le Moulin_ at her, leaning back, swaying and moving his
+thick eyebrows. It was a sad song, full of autumnal atmosphere, a
+delicate and sensual caress of sorrow. The handsome composer and the
+lusty musical critic listened to it, watched the singer with a sort of
+bland contempt. But when he threw away his cigarette and sang _Le Retour
+de Madame Blague_, an outrageous trifle, full of biting esprit and
+insolent wit, with a refrain like the hum of Paris by night, and a long
+_bouche fermee_ effect at the end, even they joined in the laughter and
+the applause, though with a certain reluctance, as if, in doing so, they
+half feared to descend into a gutter where slippery and slimy things
+made their abode.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning
+several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently
+boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time
+she was speaking to him.
+
+"_Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!_"
+
+"Then sing _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!" she exclaimed at last.
+
+And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "_Petite
+Fille de Tombouctou_."
+
+There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel
+leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And
+Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's
+answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His
+accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the
+little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while
+he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in
+a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the
+curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes
+Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale,
+impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning
+to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently
+upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so
+little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when
+the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept
+for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that
+seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the
+provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the
+room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing.
+
+After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's _Heart
+Ever Faithful_. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan
+Square.
+
+"Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into
+God's air now."
+
+The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice
+at the nets.
+
+"Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end!
+What a stroke of genius!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach--in the supper
+room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left
+the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian
+found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.
+
+Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London. Their
+father was a very rich iron-master, a self-made man, who had been
+created a Baronet and had married an ultra-aristocratic woman, the
+beautiful Miss Enid Blensover, related to half the Peerage. The blend
+had resulted in the two girls, who were certainly anything rather than
+ordinary. They were half Blensovers and half Drakes: delicate, languid,
+hot-house plants; shrewd, almost coarse, and pushing growths, hardy and
+bold, and inclined to be impudent. In appearance they resembled their
+mother, and they had often much of her enervated and almost decaying
+manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by
+wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective.
+But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to
+opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for
+himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of
+half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their
+mother nor they cared about anybody's private life or morals, provided
+the sinner was celebrated, lovely, or amusing, they knew intimately,
+even to calling by Christian names, all sorts of singers, actresses,
+dancers, sculptors, writers, and painters, who were never received in
+any sort of good society on the Continent or in America. London's
+notorious carelessness in such matters was led gaily by their mother and
+by them. Their house in Park Lane was popularly known as "the ragbag,"
+and they were perpetually under the spell of some rage of the moment.
+Now they were twin Bacchantes, influenced by a Siberian dancer at the
+Palace; now curiously Eastern, captured by a Nautch girl whom they had
+come to know in Paris. For a time they were Japanese, when the
+Criterion opened its doors to a passionate doll from Yokohama, who
+became their bosom friend. Italy touched them with the lovely hands of
+La Divina Carlotta, our lady of tears from a slum of Naples. The
+Sicilians turned them to fire and the Swedish singers to snow. At this
+moment Margot was inclined to be classic, caught by a plastic poseuse
+from Athens, who, attired solely in gold-leaf, was giving exhibitions at
+the Hippodrome to the despair of Mrs. Grundy. And Kit was waiting for a
+new lead and marking time in the newest creations from Paris.
+
+"Charmian, come and sit down for just a moment! Run away and play, Lord
+Mark!"
+
+"With whom?" said a handsome boy plaintively.
+
+"With Jenny Smythe, with Lady Dolly, anyone who can play pretty. Come
+back in ten minutes and I'll be bothered with you again--perhaps. Let's
+sit here, Charmian. Wasn't the _Fille_ too perfect? But the Bach was
+like the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. Max shouldn't have
+allowed it. What do you think of my gold gown?"
+
+"It's lovely!"
+
+"The Greeks knew everything and we know nothing. This dress hangs in
+such a calm way that one can't be anything but classic in it. Since I've
+known the Persephone I've learnt how to live. You must go to the
+Hippodrome. But what's all this about your going yachting with the
+Adelaide and an extraordinary Cornish genius? What's the matter?"
+
+The last words came out in a suddenly business-like and almost self-made
+voice, and Margot's deep eyes, full hitherto of a conscious calm,
+supposed to be Greek, abruptly darted questioning fires which might have
+sprung from a modern hussy.
+
+"D'you like him so much?" continued Margot, before Charmian had time to
+answer.
+
+"You're making a great mistake," said Charmian, with airy dignity. "I
+was only surprised to hear that Claude Heath was coming. I didn't know
+it. I understood he had refused to come. He always refuses everything.
+How did you hear of him?"
+
+"The Adelaide has been talking about him. She says he's a genius who
+hates the evil world, and will only know her and your mother, and that
+he's going with her and you and Max Elliot to the Greek Isles on one
+condition--that nobody else is to be asked and that he is to be
+introduced to no one. If it's really the Greek Isles, I think I ought to
+be taken. I told the Adelaide so, but she said Claude Heath would rather
+die than have a girl like me with him on the yacht."
+
+"So he really has accepted?"
+
+"Evidently. Now you don't look pleased."
+
+"Mr. Heath's Madretta's friend, not mine," said Charmian.
+
+"Really? Then your mother should go to Greece. Why did the Adelaide ask
+you?"
+
+"I can't imagine."
+
+"Now, Charmian!"
+
+"I assure you, Margot, I was amazed at being asked."
+
+"But you accepted."
+
+"I wanted to get out of this weather."
+
+"With a Cornish genius?"
+
+"Mr. Heath only looks at middle-aged married women," said Charmian. "I
+think he has a horror of girls. He and I don't get on at all."
+
+"What is he like?"
+
+"Plain and gaunt."
+
+"Is his music really so wonderful?"
+
+"I've never heard a note of it."
+
+"Hasn't your mother?"
+
+With difficulty Charmian kept a displeased look out of her face as she
+answered sweetly:
+
+"Once, I think. But she has said very little about it."
+
+At this moment the tragic mask of Miss Deans was seen in a doorway, and
+Margot got up quickly.
+
+"There's that darling Millie from Paris!"
+
+"Who? Where?"
+
+"Millie Deans, the only real actress on the operatic stage. Until you've
+seen her in _Crepe de Chine_ you've never seen opera as it ought to be.
+Millie! Millie!"
+
+She went rather aggressively toward Miss Deans, forgetting her calm gown
+for the moment.
+
+So Claude Heath had accepted. Charmian concluded this from Margot
+Drake's remarks. No doubt Mrs. Shiffney had received his answer that
+day. She loved giving people the impression that she was adventurous and
+knew strange and wonderful beings who wouldn't know anyone else. So she
+had not been able to keep silence about Claude Heath and the Greek
+Isles. Charmian's heart bounded. The peculiar singing of Ferdinand
+Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by
+the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination.
+Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed
+after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable
+of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was
+accustomed. There was much conventionality in her, though she did not
+know it. "The Brighton tradition" was not a mere phrase in her mother's
+mouth. Laughingly said it contained, nevertheless, particles of truth.
+But at this moment it seemed far away from Charmian, quite foreign to
+her. The Greek Isles and--
+
+Millie Deans had stepped upon the dais, accompanied by a very thin,
+hectic French boy, who sat down at the piano. But she did not seem
+inclined to sing. She looked round, glanced at the hectic boy, folded
+her hands in front of her, and waited. Max Elliot approached with his
+genial air and spoke to her. She answered, putting her dead-white face
+close to his. He also looked round the room, then hurried out. There was
+a pause.
+
+"What is it?" people murmured, turning their heads.
+
+Paul Lane bent down and said to the degagee Duchess:
+
+"She won't sing till Mr. Brett, of the opera, comes."
+
+His lips curled in a sarcastic smile.
+
+"What a fuss they all make about themselves!" returned the Duchess.
+"It's a hard face."
+
+"Millie's? She's in a violent temper. You'll see; until Mr. Brett comes
+she won't open her mouth."
+
+Miss Deans stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her
+and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands
+over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a
+laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a
+small, stout man, Mr. Brett, and Max Elliot. When he saw Miss Deans the
+stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney
+to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door.
+Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to
+Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking
+sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.
+
+Charmian was in one of the balconies now with a young man. She saw her
+mother opposite to her with Sir Hilary Burnington, looking down on the
+singer and the crowd, and she thought her mother must have heard
+something very sad. Millie Deans sang an aria of Mozart in a fine,
+steady, and warm soprano voice. Then she sang two _morceaux_ from the
+filmy opera, _Crepe de Chine_, by a young Frenchman, which she had
+helped to make the rage of Paris. Her eyes were often on Mr. Brett,
+commanding him to be favorable, yet pleading with him too.
+
+As Mrs. Mansfield looked down she was feeling sad. The crowded room
+beneath her was a small epitome of the world to which talent and genius
+are flung, to be kissed or torn to pieces, perhaps to be kissed then
+torn to pieces. And too often the listeners felt that they were superior
+to those they listened to, because to them an appeal was made, because
+they were in the position of judges. "Do we like her? Shall we take
+her?" Many faces expressed such questions as this strange-looking woman
+sang. "What does Mr. Brett think of her?" and eyes turned toward the
+stout man leaning against the wall.
+
+Did not Claude Heath do well to keep out of it all?
+
+The question passed through Mrs. Mansfield's mind as she felt the
+humiliation of the yoke which the world fastens on the artist's neck.
+She had come to care for Heath almost a little jealously, but quite
+unselfishly. She was able to care unselfishly, because she had given all
+of herself that was passionate long ago to the man who was dead. Never
+again could she be in love. Never again could she desire the closest
+relation woman can be in with man. But she felt protective toward Heath.
+She had the strong instinct, to shelter his young austerity, his
+curious talent, his reserve, and his sensitiveness. And she was thinking
+now, "If he goes yachting with Adelaide! If he allows Max to exploit
+him! If he becomes known, perhaps the fashion, even the rage! And if
+they get sick of him?" Yet what is talent for? Why is it given to any
+man? Surely to be used, displayed, bestowed.
+
+There was a hard and cruel expression on many of the listening faces
+below. Singers were there, appraising; professional critics coldly
+judging, jaded, sated, because they had heard too much of the wonderful
+sounds of the world; men like Paul Lane, by temperament inclined to
+sneer and condemn; women who loved to be in camps and whose idea of
+setting an artist on high was to tear all other artists down.
+Battlefields! Battlefields! Mrs. Mansfield was painfully conscious that
+the last thing to be found in any circle of life is peace. Too often
+there was poison in the cup which the artist had to drink. Too often to
+attract the gaze of the world was to attract and concentrate many of the
+floating hatreds of the world. The little old house near Petersburg
+Place was a quiet refuge. Mrs. Searle, a kindly dragon, kept the door.
+Yellow-haired Fan was the fairy within. The faded curtains of orange
+color shut out very much that was black and horrid. And there the Kings
+of the East passed by. But there, also, the sea was as the blood of a
+dead man.
+
+"Well, what do you think of her?" Sir Hilary was speaking.
+
+He had a face like a fairly good-natured bulldog, and, like the bulldog,
+looked as if, once fastened on an enemy, he would not easily be
+detached.
+
+"I think it's a very beautiful voice and remarkably trained."
+
+"Do you? Well, now I don't think she's a patch on Dantini."
+
+The Admiral was wholly unmusical, but, having married an accomplished
+violinist, he was inclined to lay down the law about music.
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't. No lightness, no agility; too heavy."
+
+"There are holes in her voice," observed a stout musical critic
+standing beside him. "The middle register is all wrong."
+
+"That's it," said the Admiral, snapping his jaws. "Holes in the voice
+and the--the what you may call it all wrong."
+
+"I wonder what Adelaide Shiffney thinks?" said a small, dark, and
+shrewish-looking woman just behind them. "I must go and find out."
+
+"My wife won't have her. I'm dead certain of that," said the Admiral.
+
+"She ought to start again with De Reszke," said the musical critic,
+puffing out his fat cheeks and looking suddenly like a fish.
+
+"Well, I must go down. It's getting late," said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a
+forced-up mezzo."
+
+Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying:
+
+"Charming! No, I haven't heard _Crepe de Chine_. I don't care much for
+Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really
+going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us
+_Enigme_." Mr. Brett had disappeared.
+
+"No, Mr. Elliot, it's no use talking to me, not a bit of use!" Millie
+Deans exclaimed vehemently in the hall as Rades began _Enigme_ in his
+most velvety voice. "London has no taste, it has only fashions. In Paris
+that man is not a singer at all. He is merely a _diseur_. No one would
+dream of putting him in a programme with me."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Deans, you knew he was singing to-night. And my
+programmes are always eclectic. There is no intention--"
+
+"I don't know anything about eplectic," said Millie Deans, whose
+education was one-sided, but who had temperament and talent, and also a
+very strong temper. "But I do know that Mr. Brett, who seems to rule you
+all here, is as ignorant of music as--as a carp, isn't it? Isn't it, I
+say!"
+
+"I daresay it is. But, my dear Miss Deans, people were delighted. You
+will come back, you--"
+
+"Never! He means to keep me out. I can see it. He has that Dantini in
+his pocket. A woman with a voice like a dwarf in a gramophone!"
+
+At this moment, perhaps fortunately, Miss Deans's hired electric
+brougham came up, and Max Elliot got rid of her.
+
+Although she had lost her temper Miss Deans had not lost her shrewdness.
+Mr. Brett shrugged his shoulders and confessed that the talent of Miss
+Deans did not appeal to him.
+
+"Her singing bored me," was the verdict of Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+And many of Max Elliot's guests found that they had been subject to a
+similar ennui when the American was singing.
+
+"Poor woman!" thought Mrs. Mansfield, who was unprejudiced, and who,
+with Max Elliot and other genuine musicians, recognized the gifts of
+Miss Deans.
+
+And again her mind went to Claude Heath.
+
+"Better to keep out of it! Better to keep out of it!" a voice said
+within her.
+
+And apparently Heath was of one mind with her on this matter.
+
+As Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian were going away they met Mrs. Shiffney in
+the hall with Ferdinand, who was holding her cloak.
+
+"Oh, Charmian!" she said, turning quickly, with the cloak over one of
+her broad shoulders. "I heard from Claude Heath to-day."
+
+"Did you?" said Charmian languidly, looking about her at the crowd.
+
+"Yes. He can't come. His mother's got a cold and he doesn't like to
+leave her, or something. And he's working very hard on a composition
+that nobody is ever to hear. And--I forget what else. But there were
+four sides of excuses."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Poor boy! He hasn't much savoir-faire. Good-night! I'll let you know
+when we start."
+
+Her eyes pierced Charmian.
+
+"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden
+on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
+
+That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the
+door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
+
+"If only Rades had not sung _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!"
+
+That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would
+never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such
+music was cruel when life went wrong.
+
+"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
+
+Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that
+from the first she had hated Claude Heath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A fortnight later _The Wanderer_ lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers.
+But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred
+Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over
+to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at
+the Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur.
+
+Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough,
+and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got
+out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently,
+volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great
+many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one
+else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.
+
+Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to
+her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little.
+And she had the great advantage in life--so, at least, she considered
+it--of being a theosophist.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again
+_Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ she had felt she must get out of Europe, if
+only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian
+would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's
+refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in
+England in two or three weeks. So _The Wanderer_ had gone round to
+Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her
+there.
+
+Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt
+to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had
+not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was
+sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some
+people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance
+was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her
+collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat.
+All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but
+she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were
+never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a
+passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if
+they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were
+rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were
+eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were,
+trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could
+never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead,
+and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven--she had really been
+married at sixteen--was living as companion at Folkestone with an old
+lady of eighty-two.
+
+Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally
+well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree,"
+and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly
+advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions"
+which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was
+liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about,
+had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just
+herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from
+every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many
+said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She
+possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a
+snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney
+and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her
+mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted,"
+and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services
+she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though
+she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she
+had to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this
+by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent
+accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how
+to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When
+looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train
+sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a
+perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed
+totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the
+meaning of the word shyness.
+
+When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian
+suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation--alone above
+Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed
+like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney
+always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was
+in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but
+they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek
+public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long
+Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.
+
+"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The
+assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.
+
+Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a
+sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of
+general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under
+sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when
+Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything
+this afternoon?" she answered:
+
+"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't
+bother about me."
+
+"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and
+business-like manner.
+
+Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But
+she did not.
+
+On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking
+lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old buffers talking about
+politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on,
+descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged
+garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was
+conscious of a feeling of greater ease.
+
+"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm
+trees by a little table.
+
+"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.
+
+They sat down.
+
+"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.
+
+"I shall."
+
+"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."
+
+"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."
+
+"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"
+
+"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares
+Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought
+so she found we must go away."
+
+Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her
+odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to
+tumble out.
+
+"Isn't it--" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I don't know what I was going to say."
+
+"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss
+Fleet, composedly.
+
+"Something of that sort perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as
+Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."
+
+"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity
+oneself?"
+
+"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.
+
+She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam
+of the sun on it.
+
+"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many
+things?"
+
+"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be
+fifty almost directly."
+
+"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.
+
+"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it
+quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of
+course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."
+
+Charmian put her chin in her hand.
+
+"How did you know what I thought?"
+
+"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that
+kind."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her
+chin.
+
+"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!"
+she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.
+
+"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a
+moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a
+_vieille fille_ who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man
+who didn't want to marry her."
+
+Miss Fleet was smiling.
+
+"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think
+men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."
+
+"How calm you are!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I could never be like that."
+
+"Perhaps when you are fifty."
+
+"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of
+caution very rare in her.
+
+"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."
+
+Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was
+entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had
+principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed
+in a religion--the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet--yes,
+certainly--she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even
+felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything
+else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To
+"go on" at all, ever--how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some
+minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.
+
+An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a
+motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden.
+The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where _The
+Wanderer_ lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going
+to be here again?"
+
+"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it
+for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her
+chair.
+
+"I did once."
+
+"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you
+have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or
+two?"
+
+"I can't say I do."
+
+"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."
+
+"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.
+
+"I--I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said
+Charmian.
+
+"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on
+board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear
+old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."
+
+One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary!
+And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan
+Fleet?
+
+"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm
+lucky."
+
+"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"To be as you are."
+
+After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be
+fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the
+following afternoon.
+
+"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better
+we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are
+several that are beautiful."
+
+Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry
+that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly
+now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last
+frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion.
+Algiers affected her somewhat as the _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ had
+affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it
+to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude
+Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's
+party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical
+gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble
+pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains
+singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and
+deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by
+night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I
+am nothing to him!"
+
+Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were
+violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected.
+She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known
+perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is
+done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with
+my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!"
+besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim,
+squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to
+be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of
+beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a
+lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and
+not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body
+meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere
+specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But
+what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, to
+make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness.
+Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to
+dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be
+elsewhere.
+
+At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but
+when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she
+began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of
+whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively
+at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her
+revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated.
+"She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!"
+thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In
+self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge
+of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she
+spoke.
+
+They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance
+of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there
+before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show
+Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure
+gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent
+preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of
+the hill over which the houses of Mustapha Superieur are scattered. Here
+no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors
+buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and
+laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world
+that was so near.
+
+Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by
+Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven
+banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and
+flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island,
+just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm,
+and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the
+delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm--they were
+the island, round which slept greenish-yellow water guarded by the
+azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path
+where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses,
+making a half-moon.
+
+Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin
+sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it
+by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained
+by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated
+Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in
+quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades
+in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
+It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people,
+to suggest to them--what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange
+isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which
+they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One
+longed to sail away, to land on it--and then?
+
+Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up
+the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then
+travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just
+at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet
+immediately.
+
+On the shore of the lake there was a seat.
+
+"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm
+very unhappy."
+
+She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought,
+connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some
+strange way that seemed inevitable.
+
+Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat
+tailor-made lap.
+
+"I'm sorry for that," she said.
+
+"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes
+it so much worse. I didn't know--till I came here. At least, I didn't
+really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I
+wasn't so dreadfully wretched."
+
+A sort of wave of desperation--it seemed a hot wave--surged through
+Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and
+receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.
+
+"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that
+nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."
+
+"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give
+Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.
+
+"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."
+
+"I suppose you mean a man."
+
+Charmian blushed.
+
+"That sounds--oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have
+to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care
+about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I
+know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care
+for--perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will
+never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will
+never let me."
+
+"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply
+because it seems to me that one class never really understands another,
+not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."
+
+"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the
+yacht."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.
+
+Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of
+her companion's voice.
+
+"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you seen him?"
+
+"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then
+that he wasn't coming."
+
+"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"
+
+"Is he a great friend of yours?"
+
+"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you
+think of me?"
+
+Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.
+
+"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost
+thought I hated him."
+
+"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.
+
+"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's
+mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet--or may I
+call you Susan to-day?"
+
+"Of course, and to-morrow, too."
+
+"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?
+Do you think I--am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous
+idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all
+the other girls--you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"
+
+There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched
+Susan Fleet.
+
+"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."
+
+"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I
+ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for
+him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."
+
+"Perhaps he likes you."
+
+"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I
+have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we
+know a thing by instinct--don't we?"
+
+"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within
+us."
+
+"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous,
+who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius,
+I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he
+has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the
+world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know,
+nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have
+anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and
+pined to be extraordinary!"
+
+"Extraordinary? In what way?"
+
+"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't
+endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately--quite
+lately--I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the
+perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"
+
+"I'm not laughing."
+
+"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've
+always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've
+made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm
+at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social
+capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.
+And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would
+feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man _manque_ because of a
+sort of kink in his temperament. And--I know that I could get rid of
+that kink _if_--"
+
+She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be
+madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed,
+almost fiercely.
+
+"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."
+
+"When I look at that island--"
+
+Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said,
+in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:
+
+"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go
+to rust."
+
+Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a
+dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She
+was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her
+intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.
+
+"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day,
+when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to
+me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has
+come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of
+things--here."
+
+"Tell me what it is."
+
+"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha
+Ali, walking toward the hotel--when he was just under that arch of pink
+roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew
+up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all
+an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt--I shall be here
+again with _him_."
+
+She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.
+
+"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems
+to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they
+knew, and told me."
+
+Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.
+
+"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn
+through that man, and to teach him."
+
+"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"
+
+Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with
+possibility.
+
+"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."
+
+"Learn! Why, I've just told you--"
+
+"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be
+expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."
+
+Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman
+had astonished her.
+
+"Do you?" she almost blurted out.
+
+"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I
+think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."
+
+"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone
+else."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Just before Charmian left England Mrs. Mansfield had begun to suspect
+her secret. Already from time to time she had wondered whether Charmian
+refused to accept Claude Heath, as she had accepted all the other
+habitues of the house, because she really liked him much better than she
+liked them. She had wondered and she had said, "No, it is not so." Had
+she not been less than frank with herself, and for another reason which
+made her reluctant to see truth? She scarcely knew. But when Charmian
+was gone and her mother was quite alone, she felt almost sure that she
+had to face a fact very unpleasant to her. There had been something in
+the girl's eyes as she said good-bye, a slight hardness, a lurking
+defiance, something about her lips, something even in the sound of her
+voice which had troubled Mrs. Mansfield, which continued to trouble her
+while Charmian was away.
+
+Charmian in love with Claude Heath!
+
+It seemed to the mother in those first moments of contemplation that, if
+she were right in her surmise, Charmian could scarcely have set her
+affections on a man less suited to enter into her life, less likely to
+make her happy.
+
+Charmian belonged to a certain world not merely because she was born in
+it, and had always lived in it, but by temperament, by character.
+Essentially she was of it. She could surely never be happy in the life
+led by Claude Heath. Could Claude Heath be happy in the sort of life led
+by her?
+
+Abruptly Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she did not really know Heath very
+well. A great many things about him she knew. But how much of him was
+beyond her ken. She was not even sure how he regarded Charmian. Now she
+wished very much to be more clear about that.
+
+Among her many friends Heath stood apart, and for this reason: all the
+other men of talent whom she knew intimately were in the same set, or
+belonged to sets which overlapped and intermingled. They were men who
+were making, or had made, their names; men who knew, and were known by,
+her friends and acquaintances, who needed no explanation, who were
+thoroughly "in it." Only Heath was outside, was unknown, was not taking
+an active part in the battle of art or of life. And this fact gave him a
+certain strangeness, not free from romance, gave him a peculiar value in
+Mrs. Mansfield's eyes. She secretly cherished the thought of his
+individuality. She could not wish it changed. But she knew very well
+that though such an individuality might attract her child, indeed, she
+feared, had attracted Charmian, yet Charmian, if she had any influence
+over it, would not be satisfied to let it alone, to leave it quietly to
+its own natural development. Charmian would never let any plant that
+belonged to her grow in darkness. She understood well enough the many
+clever men who frequented the house, men with ambitions which they were
+gratifying, men who were known, or who wished and intended to be known,
+men, as a rule, who were fighting, or who had fought, hard battles. To
+several of these men Charmian could have made an excellent wife.
+
+But if she had set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake.
+His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in
+Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had
+excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having
+perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the
+farther side. Mrs. Mansfield was glad that Charmian was away. Hitherto
+she had cultivated the friendship with Heath without arriere pensee. Now
+she was more conscious in it. Her great love of her only child made her
+wish to study Heath.
+
+The more she studied him the more she hoped that her guess about
+Charmian had been wrong, and yet the more she studied him the better she
+liked him. There was an intensity in him that captivated her intense
+mind, an unworldliness that her soul approved. His lack of social
+ambition, of all desire to be rich and prosperous, refreshed her. She
+compared him secretly with other men of great talent. Some of them were
+not greedy for money, but even they were greedy for fame, were almost
+fearfully solicitous about their "position," if not their social
+position then their position in the artistic world. Jealousies
+accompanied them, and within them were jealousies. They had not only the
+desire to build, but also the desire to pull down, to obliterate, to
+make ruins and dust.
+
+Among all the men whom she knew, Claude Heath was the only one who was
+alone with his art, and who wished to remain alone with the thing he
+loved. There was a purity in the situation which delighted Mrs.
+Mansfield. Yet she realized that Heath was a man who might be won away
+from that which was best in him, from that which he almost sternly clung
+to and cherished. And one day he made her aware that he knew this.
+
+They went to a concert together at Queen's Hall, and sat in the gallery,
+in seats which Heath habitually frequented when the music given was
+orchestral, when he wished to see as little as possible and to hear
+perfectly. He enjoyed hearing a fine orchestra without watching the
+conductor, whose necessary gestures, sometimes not free from an element
+of the grotesque, hindered the sweet toil of his imagination, held him
+back from worlds he desired to enter.
+
+Between the two parts of the not long concert there was a pause. During
+it Mrs. Mansfield and Claude left their seats and strolled about in the
+corridor, talking. They were both of them heated by music and ready for
+mental intimacy. But they did not discuss the works they had just heard.
+Combinations of melody and harmony turned them toward life and humanity.
+The voices of the great orchestral family called them toward the dim
+avenues where in the shadows destiny wanders. Some music enlarges the
+borders, sets us free in regions whose confines we cannot perceive. They
+spoke of aims, of ideals, of goals which are very far off.
+
+"Fine music gives me the conception of great distances," Mrs. Mansfield
+said presently. "It makes me feel that the soul is born for travel."
+
+Heath stood still.
+
+"The winding white road over the hills that loses itself in the
+vagueness which, in a picture, only some shade of blue can suggest. The
+road! The road!"
+
+He stood leaning against the wall. As she stood by him Mrs. Mansfield
+felt strangely, almost cruelly, young. It was as if student days had
+come for them both. She could hardly believe that her hair was
+snow-white, and that Charmian had been going to parties for nearly four
+years.
+
+"The worst of it is," Claude continued, "that it is so hard sometimes
+not to wander from it."
+
+"It seems to me you never wander."
+
+"Because I know that, if I did, I should probably never come back to the
+road. What you perhaps consider my strength takes its rise, I believe,
+in my knowledge of my weakness. Things that are right for others aren't
+right for me."
+
+No one was near them. The music seemed to have abolished for the moment
+the difference in age between them. Claude spoke to her as he had seldom
+spoken to her before, with an almost complete unreserve of manner.
+
+"Do you know why some men enter the cloister?" he continued. "It's
+because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines.
+Mullion House is my cloister. I haven't got the power of apportioning my
+life with sweet reason, so much work, so much play, so much retirement,
+so much society, so much restraint, so much license. I could never
+pursue my art through wildness, as so many men have done, women too. I
+don't believe I could even stick to it in the midst of the ordinary life
+of pleasures and distractions. It's like a bone that I have to seize and
+take away into a cave where no one can see me gnaw it. Isn't that a
+beastly simile?"
+
+"Is that why you won't go to Max Elliot's, that you refused Mrs.
+Shiffney? Do you think that the sort of thing which inspires many
+men--the audience, let us say, watching the combat--would unnerve you?"
+
+"I don't say that. But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance,
+or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted
+irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me
+which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate it, but it's
+there."
+
+"And yet you're so uncompromising."
+
+"That's my armor. I daren't wear ordinary clothes, lest every arrow
+should pierce me."
+
+A bell sounded. They returned to the concert room. When the second part
+was over Heath looked at Mrs. Mansfield and said:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+They were in the midst of the crowd passing out. Women were winding soft
+things about their necks, men were buttoning up their coats. For a March
+wind was about in the great city. She returned his look and smiled.
+
+"Ah! You guessed! It's the gallery, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to all
+this fun. Isn't it amazing what a groove one lives in? Berkeley Square
+shadows the whole of my life I begin to believe."
+
+"Don't say the motor is waiting!"
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"Shall we go to some preposterous place--to the Monico?"
+
+"Where you like. It's just tea time, or coffee time."
+
+They walked to the Monico in the March wind, and went in with a group of
+Italians, passing the woman who sells foreign papers, and seeing names
+that transported them to Paris, to Milan, to Rome, to Berlin. A vastness
+of marble contained a myriad of swarthy strangers, releasing souls
+astoundingly foreign in vivid gesture and talk. They had coffee with
+cream like a burgeoning cloud floating airily on the top.
+
+"The only word to describe the effect of all this upon me is spree,"
+said Mrs. Mansfield. "I am out on the spree."
+
+"Capital! And if I stepped right in to your sort of life," said Heath,
+"would it have the same kind of effect upon me?"
+
+"I don't think it could. It's too conscious, too critical, too
+fastidious. There's nothing fastidious in a spree. I like the March wind
+outside, too--the thought of it."
+
+Suddenly her mind went to Charmian and Algiers.
+
+"Charmian's in the sun," she said.
+
+Directly she said this Heath looked slightly self-conscious.
+
+"Have you heard from her?"
+
+"This morning. She has made great friends with Susan Fleet."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Oh, a woman we all like, who often helps Adelaide Shiffney with
+things."
+
+"We all like," he repeated.
+
+"A _cliche_! And indeed I scarcely know Susan Fleet. You see what an
+absurd close borough I live in, have always lived in. And I never
+thoroughly realized that till I met you."
+
+"And I live in loneliness, outside of it all, of everything almost."
+
+Lightly she answered:
+
+"With Mrs. Shiffney and others holding open the door, holding up the
+lamp, and imploring you to come in, to come right in as they say on the
+other side of the Atlantic."
+
+"You don't do that."
+
+"Do you wish me to?"
+
+"I don't know what I wish. But I am dissatisfied."
+
+He frowned, moving his chair, lit a cigarette, pushed away his coffee
+cup.
+
+"What is it like at Algiers?"
+
+"Very beautiful, Charmian says. Adelaide and the others have gone off to
+a desert place called Bou-Saada--"
+
+"Bou-Saada!" he said slowly.
+
+"And Charmian and Susan Fleet are up on the hill at Mustapha Superieur.
+They've left the yacht for a few days. They are visiting Arab villas and
+exploring tropical gardens."
+
+She watched him and sipped her coffee. All the student feeling had gone
+from her. And now she was deeply aware of the difference between her age
+and Heath's.
+
+"I suppose they won't be back for a good while," he said.
+
+"Oh, I expect them in a week or two."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Adelaide is always in a hurry, and this was only to be quite a short
+trip."
+
+"Once out there how can they come away so soon? I should want to stay
+for months. If I once began really to travel there would never be an end
+to it, unless I were not my own master."
+
+"It's quite extraordinary how you master yourself," Mrs. Mansfield said.
+"You are a dragon to yourself, and what a fierce unyielding dragon!
+It's a fine thing to have such a strong will."
+
+"Ah! But if I let it go!"
+
+"Do you think you ever will?"
+
+"Yes," he said with a sort of deep sadness. "On one side's the will. But
+on the other side there's an absurd impulsiveness. But don't let's talk
+any more of me. Do tell me some more about Algiers and your daughter."
+
+When Heath left her that day Mrs. Mansfield said to herself, "If
+Charmian really does care for him he doesn't know it."
+
+What were Heath's feelings toward Charmian she could not divine. She was
+unconscious of any desire to baffle her on Heath's part, and was
+inclined to think that he was so wrapped up in the rather solitary life
+he had planned out for himself, and in his art, was so detached from the
+normal preoccupations of strong and healthy young men, that Charmian
+meant very little, perhaps nothing at all, to him. She had noted, of
+course, the slightly self-conscious look which had come into Heath's
+face when she had mentioned Charmian, but she explained that to herself
+easily enough. Her mention of Charmian in the sun had recalled to him
+the persistence of Mrs. Shiffney, which he knew she was aware of. In
+such matters he was like a sensitive boy. He had the peculiar delicacies
+of the nervously constituted artist, which seem very ridiculous to the
+average man, but not to the discerning woman. Mrs. Mansfield felt almost
+sure that his self-consciousness arose not from memories of Charmian,
+but of Adelaide Shiffney. And she supposed that he was probably quite
+indifferent to Charmian. It was better so. Although she believed that it
+was wise for most men to marry, and not very late in life, she excepted
+Heath from her theory. She could not "see" him married. She could not
+pick out any girl or woman whom she knew, and say: "That would be the
+wife for him." Evidently he was one of the exceptional men for whom the
+normal conditions are not intended. She thought again of his music, and
+found a reason there. But then she remembered yellow-haired Fan. He was
+at home with a child, why not with a wife and child of his own? She put
+aside the problem, but did not resign the thought, "In any case Charmian
+would be the wrong woman for him to marry." And when she said that to
+herself she was thinking solely of the welfare of Heath. Because he was
+a man, and had been unreserved with her, Mrs. Mansfield instinctively
+desired to protect his life. She had the feeling, "I understand him
+better than others." In a chivalrous nature understanding breeds a
+strong sense of obligation. Mrs. Mansfield felt as if she had duties
+toward Heath. During the two weeks which elapsed before Charmian's
+return from Algiers she thought more about his future than about her
+child's. But she was a very feminine woman and, to her, a man's future
+always seemed to matter more than a woman's.
+
+Heath, too, had his great talent. That might need protection in the
+future. Mrs. Mansfield did not believe in an untroubled life for such a
+man as Heath. There was something disturbing both in his personality and
+in his music which seemed to her to preclude the possibility of his
+dwelling always in peace. But she hoped he would be true to his
+instinct, to the strange instinct which kept him now in a sort of
+cloistered seclusion. She knew he had friends, acquaintances, made
+during his time at the College of Music, through the introductions he
+had brought to London from Cornwall, through family connections. Human
+intercourse must be part of every life. But she was glad, very glad,
+that neither Mrs. Shiffney nor Max Elliot had persuaded him into the
+world where artists are handed on and on till they "know everybody." His
+words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they
+feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with
+her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued
+their art through wildness--Heath's expression--with an inflexibility
+quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the
+onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians
+born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics
+did not exist in Heath, she thought. She pondered. He was surely not a
+Bohemian. And yet he did not belong to the other race so noticeable in
+England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives
+in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable publicity, who produce
+in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane
+even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street
+thinks, who occasionally go to a levee, and have set foot on summer days
+in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be dubbed
+with a name. Was he a Bohemian who, for his health's sake, could not
+live in Bohemia? She remembered the crucifix standing in front of the
+piano where he passed so many hours, the strange and terrible words he
+had chosen to set to music, the setting he had given them. It was an
+uncompromising nature, an uncompromising talent. And yet--there was the
+other side. There was something ready to rush out to satisfy
+expectation.
+
+She was deeply interested in Heath.
+
+About ten days after the "spree" at the Monico she received a telegram
+from Marseilles--"Starting to-night, home the day after to-morrow;
+love.--CHARMIAN."
+
+Heath dropped in that day, and Mrs. Mansfield mentioned the telegram.
+
+"Charmian will be back on Thursday. I told you Adelaide Shiffney would
+be in a hurry."
+
+"Then they are not going on to the Greek Isles," he said.
+
+"Not this time."
+
+She glanced at him and thought he was looking rather sad.
+
+"Will you come and dine on Thursday night just with me and Charmian?"
+she said. "If she is tired with the journey from Paris you may be alone
+with me. If not, she can tell us about her little African experiences."
+
+"Thank you. Yes, I should like to come very much!"
+
+The strangely imaginative expression, which made his rather plain face
+almost beautiful, shone in his eyes and seemed to shed a flicker of
+light about his brow and lips, as he added:
+
+"I have travelled so little that to me there is something almost
+wonderful in the arrival of someone from Africa. Even the name comes to
+me always like fire and black mystery. Last night, just before I went to
+bed, I was reading Chateaubriand, and I came across a passage that kept
+me awake for hours."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+She leaned a little forward, ready to be fascinated as evidently he had
+been.
+
+"He is writing of Napoleon, and says of him something like this."
+
+Heath paused, looked down, seemed to make an effort, and continued, with
+his eyes turned away from Mrs. Mansfield:
+
+"'His enemies, fascinated, seek him and do not see him. He hides himself
+in his glory, as the lion of the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the
+sun to escape from the searching eyes of the dazzled hunters.' Isn't
+that simply gorgeous? It set my imagination galloping. 'As the lion of
+the Sahara hides himself in the rays of the sun'--by Jove!" He got up.
+"I was out of England last night. And to think that Miss Charmian is
+actually arriving from Africa!"
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield said to herself: "He's a child, too!"
+And she felt restless and troubled. Naivete leads men of genius into
+such unsuitable regions sometimes. It was rather wonderful that he could
+feel as he did about Africa and refuse to go to Africa. For Adelaide
+would have taken him anywhere. Would Charmian bring back with her
+something of the wonder of the East? Mrs. Mansfield felt for a moment as
+if she were going to welcome a stranger in her child. The feeling
+returned to her on the Thursday afternoon, when she was waiting for
+Charmian's arrival in her writing-room.
+
+Charmian was due at Charing Cross at three-twenty-five. She ought to be
+in Berkeley Square about four, unless the train was very crowded, and
+there was a long delay at the Customs. Four o'clock chimed from the
+Dresden china clock on the mantelpiece, and she had not arrived. Mrs.
+Mansfield was conscious of a restlessness almost amounting to
+nervousness. She got up from her chair, laid down the book she had been
+reading, and moved slowly about the room.
+
+How would Charmian receive the news that Claude Heath was to dine with
+them that night? Would she be too tired by the journey to dine? She was
+a bad sailor. Perhaps the sea in the Channel had been rough. If so, she
+would arrive not looking her best. Mrs. Mansfield had invited Heath
+because she wished to be sure at the first possible moment whether
+Charmian was in love with him or not. And she was positive that now,
+consciously alert and suspicious, if she saw the two together even for a
+short time she would know.
+
+And if she knew that it was so, that Charmian had set her affections on
+Heath--what then?
+
+She resolved not to look beyond the day. But as the moments passed, and
+she waited, her mind, like a thing beyond control, began to occupy
+itself with that question. The distant hoot of a motor startled her.
+Although their motor had a horn exactly the same as a thousand others
+she knew at once that Charmian was entering the Square. Half a minute
+later, standing in the doorway of her sitting-room, she heard the door
+bell and the footsteps of Lassell, the butler. Impulsively she went to
+the staircase.
+
+"Charmian!" she called. "Charmian!"
+
+"My only mother!" came up a voice from below.
+
+She saw Charmian pushing up her veil over her three-cornered
+travelling-hat with a bright red feather.
+
+"Where are you? Oh, there!"
+
+She came up the stairs.
+
+"Such a crossing! I'm an unlucky girl! Remedies are no use. Dearest!"
+
+She put two light hands on her mother's shoulders and kissed her twice
+with lips which were rather cold. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked
+unusually haggard and restless. An atmosphere of excitement seemed to
+surround her like an aura, Mrs. Mansfield thought. She put her arm
+through her mother's.
+
+"Tea with you, and then I think I must go to bed. How nice to be in my
+own dear bed again! I thought of my pillows on board with a yearning
+that came from the soul, I'm sure. Of course, we left the yacht at
+Marseilles. The yachting there was such a talk about resolved itself
+into the two crossings. I wasn't sorry, for we never saw a calm sea
+except from the shore."
+
+"No? What a shame! Sit here."
+
+Charmian threw herself down with a movement that was very young and
+began taking off her long gloves. As her thin, pretty hands came out of
+them, Mrs. Mansfield bent down and kissed her.
+
+"Dear child! How nice to have you safe home!"
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"What a silly question to ask your only mother!"
+
+"This chair makes me feel exactly how tired I am. It tells me."
+
+"Take off your hat."
+
+"Shall I?" She put up her hands, but she left the hat where it was, and
+her mother did not ask why.
+
+"Is Adelaide back?"
+
+"No, I left her glued to Paris. I crossed with Susan Fleet. Oh!"
+
+She rested her head on the back of the big chair, and shut her eyes.
+
+"Only tea. I can't eat!"
+
+"Here it is."
+
+"I feel as if I'd been away for centuries, as if London must have
+changed."
+
+"It hasn't."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, of course, I've shed my nature, as you see!"
+
+"I believe you think I've shed mine."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Her eyes wandered about the room.
+
+"Everything just the same."
+
+"Then Africa really has made a great difference?"
+
+The alert look that Mrs. Mansfield knew so well came into Charmian's
+face despite her fatigue.
+
+"Who thought it would?"
+
+"Well, you've never been out of Europe before."
+
+"You did?"
+
+"Wouldn't it be natural if I had fancied it might?"
+
+"Perhaps. But it was only the very edge of Africa. I never went beyond
+Mustapha Superieur. I didn't even want to go. I wonder if Susan Fleet
+did."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I didn't think very much about it. But I begin to wonder
+now. I think she's so unselfish that perhaps she makes other people
+selfish."
+
+"You made great friends, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. I think she's rather wonderful. She's very unlike other women. She
+seemed actually glad to give me the address of the place where she gets
+her coats and skirts. If Theosophy made more women like that I should
+wish it to spread like cholera in the alleys of Naples. Madre, don't
+mind me! I was really ill coming across. My head feels all light and
+empty."
+
+She put up her hands to her temples.
+
+"It's as if everything in my poor little brain-box had been shaken
+about."
+
+"Poor child! And I've been very inconsiderate."
+
+"Inconsiderate? How?"
+
+"About to-night."
+
+"You haven't accepted a party for me?"
+
+"It isn't so bad as that. But I've invited someone to dinner."
+
+"Mother!" Charmian looked genuinely surprised. "Not Aunt Kitty!"
+
+Aunt Kitty was a sister of Mrs. Mansfield's whom Charmian disliked.
+
+"Oh, no--Claude Heath."
+
+After a slight but perceptible pause, Charmian said:
+
+"Mr. Heath. Oh, you asked him for to-night before you knew I should be
+here. I see."
+
+"No, I didn't. I thought he would like to hear about your African
+experiences. I asked him after your telegram came."
+
+Charmian got up slowly, and stood where she could see herself in a
+mirror without seeming intent on looking in the glass. Her glance to it
+was very swift and surreptitious, and she spoke, to cover it perhaps.
+
+"I'm afraid I've got very little to tell about Algiers that could
+interest Mr. Heath. Would you mind very much if I gave it up and dined
+in bed?"
+
+"Do just as you like. It was stupid of me to ask him. I suppose I acted
+on impulse without thinking first."
+
+"What time is dinner?"
+
+"Eight as usual."
+
+"I'll lie down and rest and then see how I feel. I'll go now. Nice to be
+with you again, dearest Madre!"
+
+She bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. The touch of her lips just
+then was not quite pleasant to Mrs. Mansfield. When she was in her
+bedroom alone, Charmian took off her hat, and, without touching her
+hair, looked long and earnestly into the glass that stood on her
+dressing-table. Then she bent down and put her face close to the glass.
+
+"I look dreadful!" was her comment.
+
+Her maid knocked at the door and was sent away. Charmian undressed
+herself, got into bed, and lay very still. She felt very interesting,
+and as if she were going to be involved in interesting and strange
+events, as if destiny were at work, and were selecting instruments to
+help on the coming of that which had to be. She thought of her mother as
+one of these instruments.
+
+It was strange that her mother should have been moved to ask Claude
+Heath, the man she meant to marry, to come to the house alone on the
+evening of her return. This action was not a very natural one on her
+mother's part. It had always been tacitly understood that Heath was Mrs.
+Mansfield's friend. Yet Mrs. Mansfield had invited him for her daughter.
+Had thought, for which space does not exist, reached across the sea from
+child to mother mysteriously, saying to the mother, "Do this!"
+
+But unless the glass told a new tale at seven o'clock Charmian did not
+mean to go down to dinner.
+
+She closed her eyes and said to herself, again and again, "Look better!
+Look better! Look better!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the
+glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation
+in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably
+of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the
+"Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely
+told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in
+expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more
+repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.
+
+Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the
+Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage
+with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that
+conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry
+Claude Heath.
+
+"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is
+to learn through that man, and to teach him."
+
+The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to
+Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs
+through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the
+great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its
+fellows, "I shall be here again with him."
+
+Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a
+human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in
+the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with
+thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan
+Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She
+had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use
+her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.
+
+But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring
+us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of
+romance and wonder.
+
+But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined,
+too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But
+then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.
+
+For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But,
+oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at
+Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!
+
+Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls
+who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought
+them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and
+powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face,
+and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it
+in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.
+
+Softly she pulled out a drawer.
+
+At half-past seven there was a knock at the door. She opened it and saw
+her maid.
+
+"If you please, miss, Mrs. Mansfield wishes to know whether you feel
+rested enough to dine downstairs."
+
+"Yes, I do. Just tell mother, and then come back, please, Halton."
+
+When Halton came Charmian watched her almost as a cat does a mouse, and
+presently surprised an inquiring look that degenerated into a look of
+suspicion.
+
+"What's the matter, Halton?"
+
+"Nothing, miss. Which dress will you wear?"
+
+So Halton had guessed, or had suspected--there was not much difference
+between the two mental processes.
+
+"The green one I took on the yacht."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"Or the--wait a minute."
+
+"Yes, miss?"
+
+"Yes--the green one."
+
+When the maid had taken the dress out Charmian said: "Why did you look
+at me as you did just now, Halton? I wish to know."
+
+"I don't know, miss."
+
+"Well, I have put something on."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"I looked so sea-sick--yellow. No one wants to look yellow."
+
+"No, I'm sure, miss."
+
+"But I don't want--come and help me, Halton. I believe you know things I
+don't."
+
+Halton had been with the lovely Mrs. Charlton Hoey before she came to
+Charmian, and she did know things unknown to her young mistress.
+Trusted, she was ready to reveal them, and Charmian went downstairs at
+three minutes past eight more ingenious than she had been at ten minutes
+before that hour.
+
+Although she was quite, quite certain that neither her mother nor Claude
+Heath would discover what had been done with Halton's assistance, she
+was nevertheless sufficiently uncertain to feel a tremor as she put her
+hand on the drawing-room door, and it was a tremor in which a sense of
+shame had a part.
+
+Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at
+him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed
+to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer,
+weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust,
+far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange
+little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had
+a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own
+brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to
+prompt it.
+
+But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For
+his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He
+was looking for Africa, but she did not know it.
+
+Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed
+change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed
+before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it
+made an impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness
+within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her
+face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything,
+about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you
+are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added:
+
+"Your rest has done you good."
+
+"Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You
+mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You
+must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this
+time?"
+
+It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone
+and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But
+he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.
+
+When almost immediately they went in to dinner, Mrs. Mansfield
+deliberately turned the conversation to Charmian's recent journey. This
+was to be Charmian's dinner. Charmian was the interesting person, the
+traveller from Algeria. Had not Claude Heath been invited to hear all
+about the trip? Mrs. Mansfield remembered the imaginative look which had
+transformed his face just before he had quoted Chateaubriand. And she
+remembered something else, something Charmian had once said to her: "You
+jump into minds and hearts and poor little I remain outside, squatting,
+like a hungry child!" She had a sincere horror of the elderly mother who
+clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
+to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
+which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
+made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
+There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
+Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
+generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
+child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
+source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
+be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.
+
+The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
+learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
+pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
+that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
+as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
+to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
+so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.
+
+Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.
+
+"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
+wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
+quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
+desirous tourist."
+
+"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.
+
+"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
+have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
+anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
+rushes on as if driven by furies."
+
+There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
+wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
+unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
+takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
+demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
+express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
+horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
+she felt defiant and almost hard.
+
+"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.
+
+"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting time. I thought a
+first visit to Africa must be a wonderful experience."
+
+"But, then--why refuse to come?"
+
+She gazed full into his face, and made her long eyes look impertinent,
+challenging. Mrs. Mansfield felt very uncomfortable.
+
+"I!" said Heath. "Oh, I didn't know I was in question! Surely we were
+talking about the impression Algiers made upon you."
+
+"Well, but if you condemn me for not being more enthusiastic, surely it
+is natural for me to wonder why you wouldn't for anything set foot in
+the African Paradise."
+
+She laughed. Her nerves felt on edge after the journey. And something in
+the mental atmosphere affected her unfavorably.
+
+"But, Miss Charmian, I don't condemn you. It would be monstrous to
+condemn anyone for not being able to feel in a certain way. I hope I
+have enough brains to see that."
+
+He spoke almost hotly.
+
+"Your mother and I had been imagining that you were having a wonderful
+time," he added. "Perhaps it was stupid of us."
+
+"No. Algiers is wonderful."
+
+Heath had changed her, had suddenly enabled her to be more natural.
+
+"I include Mustapha, of course. Some of the gardens are marvellous, and
+the old Arab houses. And I think perhaps you would have thought them
+more marvellous even than I did."
+
+"But, why?"
+
+"Because I think you could see more in beautiful things than I can,
+although I love them."
+
+Her sudden softness was touching. Heath had never been paid a compliment
+that had pleased him so much as hers. He had not expected it, and so it
+gained in value.
+
+"I don't know that," he said hesitatingly.
+
+"Madretta, don't you agree with me?"
+
+"No doubt you two would appreciate things differently."
+
+"But what I mean is that Mr. Heath in the things we should both
+appreciate could see more than I."
+
+"Pierce deeper into the heart of the charm? Perhaps he could. Oh, eat a
+little of this chicken!"
+
+"No, dearest mother, I can't. I'm in a Nebuchadnezzar mood. Spinach for
+me."
+
+She took some.
+
+"Everything seems a little vague and Channelly to-night, even spinach."
+
+She looked up at Heath, and now he saw a sort of evasive charm in her
+eyes.
+
+"You must forgive me if I'm tiresome to-night, and remember that while
+you and Madre have been sitting comfortably in Mullion House and
+Berkeley Square, I've been roaring across France and rolling on the sea.
+I hate to be a slave to my body. Nothing makes one feel so contemptible.
+But I haven't attained to the Susan Fleet stage yet. I'll tell you all
+about her some day, Mr. Heath, but not now. You would like her. I know
+that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name
+for you? I call you--the Great Refuser."
+
+Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"I have my work, you see."
+
+"We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it
+was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished
+Monsieur Rades was with us. He's clever, but he could never do a big
+thing. Could he, mother?"
+
+"No, but he does little things beautifully."
+
+"What it must be to be able to do a big thing!" said Charmian. "To draw
+in color and light and perfume and sound, and to know you will be able
+to weave them together, and transform them, and give them out again with
+you in them, making them more strange, more wonderful. We saw an island,
+Susan Fleet and I, that--well, if I had had genius I could have done
+something exquisite the day I saw it. It seemed to say to me: 'Tell
+them! Tell them! Make them feel me! Make them know me! All those who are
+far away, who will never see me, but who would love me as you do, if
+they knew me.' And--it was very absurd, I know!--but I felt as if it
+were disappointed with me because I had no power to obey it. Madre,
+don't you think that must be the greatest joy and privilege of genius,
+that capacity for getting into close relations with strange and
+beautiful things? I couldn't obey the little island, and I felt almost
+as if I had done it a wrong."
+
+"Where was it? In the sea?"
+
+"No--oh, no! But I can't tell you! It has to be seen--"
+
+Suddenly there came upon her again, almost like a cloud enveloping her,
+the strong impression that destiny would lead her some day to that
+Garden of the Island with Heath. She did not look at him. She feared if
+she did he would know what was in her mind and heart. Making an effort,
+she recovered her self-command, and said:
+
+"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath.
+Do you mind if I tell you what _I_ think?"
+
+"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.
+
+"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you
+ought to give it food. And I think _you_ don't want to give it food."
+
+"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention
+many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose
+imagination was nearly always in a blaze."
+
+Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of
+dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with
+her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give
+herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence.
+She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to
+realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused
+to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her
+depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And
+she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it
+to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any
+longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is
+everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using
+her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by
+Charmian that evening.
+
+Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:
+
+"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen
+the island?"
+
+He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his
+hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:
+
+"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."
+
+"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she
+spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.
+
+"I suppose so. Why not?"
+
+"Oh!" she said petulantly. "You remind me of Oliver Cromwell--somebody
+of that kind--you ought to have lived in Puritan days. It's
+England--England--England in you shrivelling you up. I'm sure in all
+Algiers there isn't one person (not English) who thinks as you do. But
+if you were to travel, if you were to give yourself a chance, how
+different you'd be!"
+
+"Charmian, you impertinent child!" said Mrs. Mansfield, smiling, but in
+a voice that was rather sad.
+
+"It's the Channel! It's the Channel! I'm not myself to-night!"
+
+Heath laughed and said something light and gay. But as he went out of
+the room his face looked troubled.
+
+As soon as he had gone, Charmian got up and turned to her mother.
+
+"Are you very angry with me, Madre?"
+
+"No. There always was a touch of the minx in you, and I suppose it is
+ineradicable. What have you been doing to your face?"
+
+Charmian flushed. The blood even went up to her forehead, and for once
+she looked confused, almost ashamed.
+
+"My face? You--you have noticed something?"
+
+"Of course, directly you came down. Has Adelaide taught you that?"
+
+"No! Are you angry, mother?"
+
+"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
+And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
+against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
+hair become white."
+
+"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"
+
+"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
+me look ten years younger than I do, but if I paid them, do you know I
+think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield paused.
+
+"Lose--friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.
+
+"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
+than perhaps you would believe to be possible."
+
+"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.
+
+Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
+from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
+sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
+her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"
+
+After a moment she got up.
+
+"Bedtime," she said.
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
+other.
+
+"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."
+
+"But you loved Algiers, I think."
+
+"Did I? I suppose I did."
+
+"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.
+
+When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
+vanished.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
+Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
+her child toward happiness?
+
+For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
+loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
+never be bridged?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Heath was troubled and was angry with himself for being troubled.
+Looking back it seemed to him that he had taken a false step when he
+consented to that dinner with Max Elliot. Surely since that evening he
+had never been wholly at peace. And yet on that evening he had entered
+into his great friendship with Mrs. Mansfield. He could not wish that
+annulled. It added value to his life. But Mrs. Shiffney and Charmian in
+combination had come into his life with her. And they began to vex his
+spirit. He felt as if they represented a great body of opinion which was
+set against a deep conviction of his own. Their motto was, "The world
+for the artist." And what was his, or what had been his until now? "His
+world within the artist." He had fed upon himself, striving rather to
+avoid than to seek outside influences. After Charmian's return from
+Africa a persistent doubt assailed him. His strong instinct might be a
+blind guide. The opinion of the world, represented by the shrewd married
+woman and the intelligent girl, might have reason on its side.
+
+Certainly Charmian's resolute assertion of herself on the evening of her
+return had been surprisingly effective. In an hour she had made an
+impression upon Heath such as she had failed to make in many weeks of
+their previous acquaintanceship. Her attack had gone home. "If you were
+to give yourself a chance how different you'd be!" And then her outburst
+about the island! There had been truth in it. Color and light and
+perfume and sound are material given out to the artist. He takes them,
+uses them, combines them, makes them his. He helps them! Ah! That was
+the word! He, as it were, gives them wings so that they may fly into the
+secret places, into the very hearts of men.
+
+Heath looked round upon his hermitage, the little house near St.
+Petersburg Place, and he was companioned by fears. His energies
+weakened. The lack of self-confidence, which often affected him when he
+was divorced from his work, began to distress him when he was working.
+He disliked what he was doing. Music, always the most evasive of the
+arts, became like a mist in his sight. There were moments when he hated
+being a composer, when he longed to be a poet, a painter, a sculptor.
+Then he would surely at least know whether what he was doing was good or
+bad. Now, though he was inclined to condemn, he did not feel certain
+even of ineptitude.
+
+Mrs. Searle noted the change in her master, and administered her
+favorite medicine, Fan, with increasing frequency. As the neurasthenic
+believes in strange drugs, expensive cures, impressive doctors, she
+believed in the healing powers of the exceedingly young. Nor was Fan
+doubtful of her own magical properties. She supposed that her intense
+interest in herself and the affairs of her life was fully shared by
+Heath. Her confidences to him in respect of Masterman and other
+important matters were unbridled. She seldom strove to charm by
+listening, and never by talking to Heath about himself. Her method of
+using herself as a draught of healing was to draw him into the current
+of her remarkable life, to set him floating on the tides of her fate.
+
+Heath had a habit of composing after tea, from five or five-thirty
+onward. And Fan frequently appeared at the studio door about half-past
+four, turned slightly sideways with an expectant glance into the large
+room with the book-lined walls, the dim paintings, and the
+orange-colored curtains. A faint air of innocent coquetry hung about
+her. After a pause and a smile from Heath, she would move forward with
+hasty confidence, sometimes reaching the hearthrug with a run. She was
+made welcome, petted, apparently attended to with a whole mind. But
+while she delivered her soul of its burden, at great length and with
+many indrawn breaths and gusts of feeling, Heath was often saying to
+himself, "Am I provincial?"
+
+The word rankled now that Charmian had spoken out with such almost
+impertinent abruptness. Had he then lost faith in Mrs. Mansfield? She
+had never said that she wished him different from what he was. And
+indirectly she had praised his music. He knew it had made a powerful
+impression upon her. Nevertheless, he could not forget Charmian's
+words. Nor could he help linking her with Mrs. Shiffney in his mind.
+
+Fan pulled at his sleeve, raising her voice. He was reminded of a little
+dog clawing to attract attention.
+
+"Yes, Fantail! I mean no, of course not! If Masterman refuses to take a
+bath, of course you are obliged to punish him. Yes, yes, I know. Wear
+something? What? What's that? Like you? But he's a man. Very well, we'll
+get him a pair of trousers. No, I won't forget. Yes, like mine, long
+ones like mine. It'll be all right. Take care with that cup. I think
+mother must be wanting you. Press the bell hard. Well, use your thumb
+then. That's it--harder. There, you see, mother does want you. Harriet
+says so."
+
+Harriet, discreet almost to dumbness though she was, was capable of
+receiving a hint conveyed by her master's expressive eyebrows. And Fan
+passed on, leaving Heath alone with his piano. He played what he had
+played to Mrs. Mansfield to reassure himself. But he was not wholly
+reassured. And he knew that desire for a big verdict which often
+tortures the unknown creator. This was a new and, he thought, ugly phase
+in his life. Was he going to be like the others? Was he going to crave
+for notoriety? Why had the words of a mere girl, of no unusual
+cleverness or perception, had such an effect upon him? How thin she had
+looked that day when she emerged from her furs. That was before she
+started for Africa. The journey had surely made a great difference in
+her. She had come back more of a personage, more resolute. He felt the
+will in her as he had not felt it before. Till she came back he had only
+felt the strong soul in her mother. That was like an unwavering flame.
+How Mrs. Mansfield's husband must have loved her.
+
+And Heath's hands slipped from the piano, and he dreamed over women.
+
+He was conscious of solitude.
+
+Susan Fleet was now in town. After the trip to Algiers she had been to
+Folkestone to visit her mother and dear old Mrs. Simpkins. She had also
+combined business with pleasure and been fitted for a new coat and
+skirt. A long telegram from Adelaide Shiffney called her back to London
+to under-take secretarial and other duties. As the season approached
+Mrs. Shiffney's life became increasingly agitated. Miss Fleet was an
+excellent hand at subduing, or, if that were impossible, at getting
+neatness into agitation. She knew well how to help fashionable women to
+be absurd with method. She made their silliness almost business-like,
+and assisted them to arrange their various fads in apple-pie order. Amid
+their often hysterical lives she moved with a coolness that was
+refreshing even to them. She never criticized their actions except
+sometimes by tacitly declining to join in them. And they seldom really
+wanted her to do that. Her value to them would have been diminished, if
+not destroyed, had she been quite as they were.
+
+For the moment she was in Grosvenor Square.
+
+Charmian envied Adelaide Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of
+Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny
+something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother.
+Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's
+account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her
+mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would
+not have minded the fact that it was known. But she did mind very much
+its being known when she had not told it. Sometimes she said to herself
+that she was being absurd, that Mrs. Mansfield knew, even suspected,
+nothing. But unfortunately she was a woman and, therefore, obliged to be
+horribly intelligent in certain directions. Her painted cheeks and
+delicately-darkened eyelashes had spoken what her lips had never said.
+It was vain to pretend the contrary. And she sedulously pretended it.
+
+Her sense of separation from her mother made Charmian the more desirous
+of further intercourse with Susan Fleet. She felt as if only Miss Fleet
+could help her, though how she did not know. After repeated attempts on
+her part a meeting was at last arranged, and one afternoon the
+Theosophist made her appearance in Berkeley Square and was shown
+upstairs to Charmian's little sitting-room.
+
+Charmian was playing a Polonaise of Chopin's on a cottage piano. She
+played fairly well, but not remarkably. She had been trained by a
+competent master and had a good deal of execution. But her playing
+lacked that grip and definite intention which are the blood and bone of
+a performance. Several people thought nevertheless that it was full of
+charm.
+
+"Oh, Susan!"--she stopped abruptly on a diminished seventh. "Come and
+sit here! May I?"
+
+She kissed the serene face, clasping the white-gloved hands with both of
+hers.
+
+"Another from Folkestone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What a fit! I simply must go there. D'you like my little room?"
+
+Susan looked quietly round, examining the sage-green walls, the
+water-colors, the books in Florentine bindings, the chairs and sofas
+covered with chintz, which showed a bold design of purple grapes with
+green leaves, the cream-colored rough curtains, and Charmian's
+dachshund, Caroline, who lay awake before the small fire which burned in
+a grate lined with Morris tiles.
+
+"Yes, I like it very much. It looks like your home and as if you were
+fond of it."
+
+"I am, so far as one can be fond of a room."
+
+She paused, hesitating, thinking of the little island and her sudden
+outburst, longing to return at once to the subject which secretly
+obsessed her, yet fearing to seem childish, too egoistic, perhaps
+naively indiscreet. Susan looked at her with a friendly gaze.
+
+"How are things going with you? Are you happier than you were at
+Mustapha?"
+
+"You mean--about that?"
+
+"I'm afraid you have been worrying."
+
+"Do I look uglier?" cried Charmian, almost with sharpness.
+
+Susan Fleet could not help smiling, but in her smile there was no
+sarcasm, only a gentle, tolerant humor.
+
+"I hardly know. People say my ideas about looks are all crazy. I can't
+admire many so-called beauties, you see. There's more expression in your
+face, I think. But I don't know that I should call it happy expression."
+
+"I wish I were like you. I wish I could feel indifferent to happiness!"
+
+"I don't suppose I am indifferent. Only I don't feel that every small
+thing of to-day has power over me, any more than I feel that a grain of
+dust which I can flick from my dress makes me unclean. It's a long
+journey we are making. And I always think it's a great mistake to fuss
+on a journey."
+
+"I don't know anyone who can give me what you do," said Charmian.
+
+"It's a long journey up the Ray," said Susan.
+
+"The Ray?" said Charmian, seized with a sense of mystery.
+
+"The bridge that leads from the personal which perishes to the immortal
+which endures."
+
+"I can't help loving the personal. I'm not like you. I do love the
+feeling of definite personality, separated from everything, mine, me.
+It's no use pretending."
+
+"Pretence is always disgusting."
+
+"Yes, of course. But still--never mind, I was only going to say
+something you wouldn't agree with."
+
+Susan did not ask what it was, but quietly turned the conversation, and
+soon succeeded in ridding Charmian of her faint self-consciousness.
+
+"I want you to meet--him."
+
+At last Charmian had said it, with a slight flush.
+
+"I have met him," returned Miss Fleet, in her powerful voice.
+
+"What!" cried Charmian, on an almost indignant note.
+
+"I met him last night."
+
+"How could you? Where? He never goes to anything!"
+
+"I went with Adelaide to the Elgar Concert at Queen's Hall. He was there
+with a musical critic, and happened to be next to us."
+
+Charmian looked very vexed and almost injured.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney--and you talked to him?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Adelaide introduced us."
+
+There was a silence. Then Charmian said:
+
+"I don't suppose he was his real self--with Adelaide Shiffney. But did
+you like him?"
+
+"I did. I thought him genuine. And one sees the spirit clearly in his
+face."
+
+"I'm sure he liked you."
+
+"I really don't know."
+
+"I do. Did he--did you--either of you say anything about me?"
+
+"Certainly we did."
+
+"Did he--did he seem--did you notice whether he was at all--? Caroline,
+be quiet!"
+
+The dachshund, who had shown signs of an intention to finish her reverie
+on Charmian's knees, blinked, looked guilty, lay down again, turned over
+on her left side with her back to her mistress, and heaved a sigh that
+nearly degenerated into a whimper.
+
+"I suppose he talked most of the time with Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+"Well, we had quite five minutes together. I spoke about our time at
+Mustapha."
+
+"Did he seem interested?"
+
+"Very much, I thought."
+
+"Very much! Oh, Susan! But he has a manner of seeming interested. It may
+not mean anything. But still I do think since I have come back he sees
+that I am not quite a nonentity. He has been here several times, for
+mother of course. Even now I have never heard his music. But there is a
+difference. I believe in such a place as London unless one has
+resolution to assert oneself people think one is a sort of shadow. I
+have so often thought of what you said about my perhaps having to learn
+through Claude Heath and to teach him, too. Sometimes when I look at him
+I feel it must be so. But what have I to teach? D'you know
+since--since--well, it makes me feel humble often. And yet I know that
+the greatest man needs help. Men are a sort of children. I've often been
+surprised by the childishness of really big men. Please tell me all he
+said to you."
+
+Very calmly Susan told. She had just finished, and Charmian was about to
+speak again, when Mrs. Mansfield opened the door. Charmian sprang up so
+abruptly that Caroline was startled into a husky bark.
+
+"Oh, Madre! Susan Fleet is here!"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield knew at once that she had broken in upon a confidential
+interview, not by Miss Fleet's demeanor, but by Charmian's. But she did
+not show her knowledge. She sat down and joined pleasantly in the talk.
+She had often seen Miss Fleet in London, but she did not know her well.
+At once she realized that Charmian had found an excellent friend. And
+she was not jealous because of the confidence given but not given to
+her. Youth, she knew, is wilful and must have its way. The nearest, for
+some inscrutable reason, are generally told the least.
+
+When Miss Fleet went away, Mrs. Mansfield said:
+
+"That is one of the most thoroughbred human beings I have ever seen. No
+wonder the greatest snobs like her. There is nothing a snob hates so
+much as snobbery in another. _Viva_ to your new friend, Charmian!"
+
+She wondered a little whether Miss Fleet's perception of character was
+as keen as her breeding was definite, when she heard that Claude Heath
+had met her.
+
+Heath told Mrs. Mansfield this. Miss Fleet had made a strong impression
+upon him. At the moment when he had met her he had felt specially
+downcast. The musical critic, with whom he had gone to the concert, had
+been a fellow student with him at the Royal College. Being young the
+critic was very critical, very sure of himself, very decisive in his
+worship of the new idols and in his scathing contempt for the old. He
+spoke of Mendelssohn as if the composer of _Elijah_ had earned undying
+shame, of Gounod as if he ought to have been hanged for creating his
+_Faust_. His glorification of certain modern impressionists in music
+depressed Heath, almost as much as his abuse of the dead who had been
+popular, and who were still appreciated by some thousands, perhaps
+millions, of nobodies. He made Heath, in his discontented condition,
+feel as if all art were futile.
+
+"Why give up everything," he thought, "merely to earn in the end the
+active contempt of men who have given up nothing? What is it that drives
+me on? A sort of madness, perhaps, something to be rooted out."
+
+He almost shivered as the conviction came to him that he must have been
+composing for posterity, since he did not desire present publicity. No
+doubt he had tried to trick himself into the belief that he had toiled
+for himself alone, paid the tribute of ardent work to his own soul. Now
+he asked himself, with bitter scepticism: "Does any man really ever do
+that?" And his world seemed to fall about him like shadows dropping down
+into a void.
+
+Then came his five minutes of talk with Susan Fleet.
+
+When Heath spoke of it to Mrs. Mansfield he said:
+
+"I was a cripple when we began. When we stopped I felt as if I could
+climb to a peak. And she said nothing memorable. But I had been in her
+atmosphere."
+
+"And you are very susceptible to atmosphere."
+
+"Too susceptible. That's why I keep so much to myself."
+
+"I know--the cloister."
+
+She looked at him earnestly, even searchingly. He slightly reddened,
+looked down, said slowly:
+
+"It's not a natural life, the life of the cloister."
+
+"Perhaps you mean to come out."
+
+"I don't know what I mean. I am all at a loose end lately."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+Her eyes were still on him.
+
+"I hardly know. Perhaps hearing about Africa, of that voyage I might
+have made, unsettled me. I'm a weakling, I'm afraid."
+
+"Very strong in one way."
+
+"Very weak in another, perhaps. It would have been better to go and have
+done with it, than to brood over not having gone."
+
+"You are envying Charmian?"
+
+"Some days I envy everyone who isn't Claude Heath," he answered
+evasively, with a little covering laugh. "Of one thing I am quite sure,
+that I wish I were a male Miss Fleet. She knows what few people know."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"What is small and what is great."
+
+"And you found that out in five minutes at a concert?"
+
+"Elgar's is music that helps the perceptions."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield's perceptions were very keen. Yet she was puzzled by
+Heath. She realized that he was disturbed and attributed that
+disturbance to Charmian. Had he suspected, or found out, that Charmian
+imagined herself to be in love with him? He came as usual to the house.
+His friendship with Mrs. Mansfield did not seem to her to have changed.
+But his relation to Charmian was not what it had been. Indeed, it was
+scarcely possible that it should be so. For Charmian had continued to be
+definite ever since her drastic remarks at dinner on the evening of her
+return. She bantered Heath, laughed at him, patronized him in the pretty
+way of a pretty London girl who takes the world for her own with the
+hands of youth. When she found him with her mother she did not glide
+away, or remain as a mere listener while they talked. She stayed to hold
+her own, sometimes even--so her mother thought, not without pathos--a
+little aggressively.
+
+Heath's curious and deep reserve, which underlay his apparent quick and
+sensitive readiness to be sympathetic with those about him, to give them
+what they wanted of him, was not abated by Charmian's banter, her
+delicate impertinences, her laughing attacks. Mrs. Mansfield noticed
+that. He turned to her still when he wished to speak for a moment out of
+his heart.
+
+But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred
+him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew
+how to involve him in eager arguments.
+
+One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said
+to Mrs. Mansfield:
+
+"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could
+concentrate. She has powers, you know."
+
+When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.
+
+"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?"
+she thought.
+
+She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised
+her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.
+
+"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they
+could see, we should have ten commandments to obey--perhaps twenty."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden
+Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new
+opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was
+unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first
+performance of this work, which was called _Le Paradis Terrestre_, the
+inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual
+excitement. Whispers went round that the new opera was quite
+extraordinary, epoch-making, that it was causing a prodigious impression
+at rehearsal, that it was absolutely original, that there was no doubt
+of its composer's genius. Then reports as to the composer's personality
+and habits began to get about. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, knew him. But
+she had introduced him to nobody. He was her personal prey at present.
+She, however, allowed it to be known that he was quite charming, but the
+strangest creature imaginable. It seemed that he had absolutely no moral
+sense, did not know what it meant. If he saw an insect trodden upon, or
+a fly killed on a window-pane, he could not work for days. But when his
+first wife--he had been married at sixteen--shot herself in front of
+him, on account of his persistent cruelty and infidelity, he showed no
+sign of distress, had the body carried out of his studio, and went on
+composing. Decidedly an original! Everybody was longing to know him. The
+libraries and the box-office of the Opera House were bombarded with
+demands for seats for the first performance, at which the beautiful
+Annie Meredith, singer, actress, dancer, speculator, and breeder of
+prize bulldogs, was to appear in the heroine's part.
+
+Three nights before the premiere, a friend, suddenly plunged into
+mourning by the death of a relation, sent Mrs. Mansfield her box.
+Charmian was overjoyed. Max Elliot, Lady Mildred Burnington, Margot and
+Kit Drake, Paul Lane, all her acquaintances, in fact, were already
+"raving" about Jacques Sennier, without knowing him, and about his
+opera, without having heard it. Sensation, success, they were in the
+air. Not to go to this premiere would be a disaster. Charmian's
+instinctive love of being "in" everything had caused her to feel acute
+vexation when her mother had told her that their application for stalls
+had been refused. Now, at the last moment, they had one of the best
+boxes in the house.
+
+"Whom shall we take?" said Mrs. Mansfield. "There's room for four."
+
+"Why not invite Mr. Heath?" said Charmian, with a rather elaborate
+carelessness. "As he's a musician it might interest him."
+
+"I will if you like. But he's sure to refuse."
+
+Of late Heath had retired into his shell. Mrs. Shiffney had not seen him
+for months. Max Elliot had given him up in despair. Even in Berkeley
+Square he was but seldom visible. His excuse for not calling was that he
+knew nobody had any time to spare in the season.
+
+"Don't write to him, Madre, or he will. Get him to come here and ask
+him. He really ought to follow the progress of his own art, silly
+fellow. I have no patience with his absurd fogeydom."
+
+She spoke with the lightest scorn, but in her long eyes there was an
+intentness which contradicted her manner.
+
+Heath came to the house, was invited to come to the box, and had just
+refused when Charmian entered the room.
+
+"You're afraid, Mr. Heath," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Afraid! What of?" he asked quickly, and a little defiantly.
+
+"Afraid of hearing what the foreign composers of your own age are doing,
+of comparing their talents with your own. That's so English! Never mind
+what the rest of the world is about! We'll go on in our own way! It
+seems so valiant, doesn't it? And really it's nothing but cowardice,
+fear of being forced to see that others are advancing while we are
+standing still. I'm sick of English stolidity!"
+
+Heath's eyes shown with something that looked like anger.
+
+"I really don't think I'm afraid!" he said stiffly.
+
+Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to
+the premiere with the Mansfields. It was a triumph for Charmian, but she
+did not show that she knew it.
+
+Heath was in his most reserved mood. He had the manner of the defiant
+male lured from behind his defenses into the open against his will. Some
+intelligence within him knew that his cold stiffness was rather
+ridiculous, and made him unhappy. Mrs. Mansfield was really sorry for
+him.
+
+Nothing is more humorously tragic than pleasure indulged in under
+protest. And Heath's protest was painfully apparent.
+
+Charmian, who was looking her best, her most self-possessed, a radiant
+minx, with fleeting hints of depths and softnesses, half veiled by the
+firm habit of the world, seemed to tower morally above the composer. He
+marvelled afresh at the triumphant composure of modern girlhood. Sitting
+between the two women in the box--no one else had been asked to join
+them--he looked out, almost shyly, at the crowded and brilliant house.
+Mrs. Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a
+box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul
+Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was
+covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine
+intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair. In the box
+next the stage on the same side were the Max Elliots with Sir Hilary
+Burnington and Lady Mildred.
+
+Charmian looked eagerly about the house, putting up her opera-glasses,
+finding everywhere friends and acquaintances. She frankly loved the
+world with the energy of her youth.
+
+At this moment the sight of the huge and crowded theater, full of
+watchful eyes and whispering lips, full of brains and souls waiting to
+be fed, the sound of its hum and stir, sent a warm thrill through her,
+thrill of expectation, of desire. She thought of that man, Jacques
+Sennier, hidden somewhere, the cause of all that was happening in the
+house, of all that would happen almost immediately upon the stage. She
+envied him with intensity. Then she looked at Claude Heath's rather grim
+and constrained expression. Was it possible that Heath did not share her
+feeling of envy?
+
+There was a tap at the door. Heath sprang up and opened it. Paul Lane's
+pale and discontented face appeared.
+
+"Halloa! Haven't seen you since that dinner! May I come in for a
+minute?"
+
+He spoke to the Mansfields.
+
+"Perfectly marvellous! Everyone behind the scenes is mad about it! Annie
+Meredith says she will make the success of her life in it. Who's that
+Frenchwoman with Adelaide Shiffney? Madame Sennier, the composer's
+wife--his second, the first killed herself. Very clever woman. She's not
+going to kill herself. Sennier says he could do nothing without her,
+never would have done this opera but for her. She found him the
+libretto, kept him at it, got the Covent Garden management interested in
+it, persuaded Annie Meredith to come over from South America to sing the
+part. An extraordinary woman, ugly, but a will of iron, and an ambition
+that can't be kept back. Her hour of triumph to-night. There goes the
+curtain."
+
+As Lane slipped out of the box, he whispered to Heath:
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney hopes you'll come and speak to her between the acts. Her
+name's on the door."
+
+Heath sat down a little behind Mrs. Mansfield. Although the curtain was
+now up he noticed that Charmian, with raised opera-glasses, was
+earnestly looking at Mrs. Shiffney's box. He noticed, too, that her left
+hand shook slightly, almost imperceptibly.
+
+"Her hour of triumph!" Yes, the hour proved to be that. Madame Sennier's
+energies had not been expended in vain. From the first bars of music,
+from the first actions upon the stage, the audience was captured by the
+new work. There was no hesitating. There were no dangerous moments. The
+evening was like a crescendo, admirably devised and carried out. And
+through it all Charmian watched the ugly white face of the red-haired
+woman opposite to her, lived imaginatively in that woman's heart and
+brain, admired her, almost hated her, longed to be what she was.
+
+Between the acts she saw men pouring into Mrs. Shiffney's box. And every
+one was presented to the ugly woman, whose vivacity and animation were
+evidently intense, who seemed to demand homage as a matter of course.
+Several foreigners kissed her hand. Max Elliot's whole attitude, as he
+bent over her, showed adoration and enthusiasm. Even Paul Lane was
+smiling, as he drew her attention to a glove split by his energy in
+applause.
+
+Heath had spoken of Mrs. Shiffney's message. He was evidently reluctant
+to obey it, but Charmian insisted on his going.
+
+"I want to know what Madame Sennier is like. You must ask her if she is
+happy, find out how happy she is."
+
+"Charmian, Mr. Heath isn't a mental detective!"
+
+"I speak such atrocious French!" said Heath, looking nervous and
+miserable.
+
+"I suppose you can say, '_Chere Madame, j'espere que vous etes bien
+contente ce soir_?'"
+
+When Heath had left the box Mrs. Mansfield said gravely to her daughter:
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+"Yes, Madretta."
+
+"I don't think you are behaving very kindly this evening. You scarcely
+seem to remember that Mr. Heath is our guest."
+
+"Against his will," she said, in a voice that was almost hard. There was
+a hardness, too, in her whole look and manner.
+
+"I think that only makes the hostess's obligation the stronger," said
+Mrs. Mansfield. "I don't at all like the Margot manner with men."
+
+"I'm sorry, Madre; but I had no idea I was imitating Margot Drake."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield said no more. Charmian, with flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes, turned to look once more at Adelaide Shiffney's box.
+
+In about three minutes she saw Mrs. Shiffney glance behind her. Max
+Elliot, who was still with her, got up and opened the door, and Heath
+stood in the background. Charmian frowned and pressed her little teeth
+on her lower lip. Her body felt stiff with attention, with scrutiny. She
+saw Heath come forward, Max Elliot holding him by the arm, and talking
+eagerly and smiling. Mrs. Shiffney smiled, too, laughed, gave him her
+powerful hand. Now he was being introduced to Madame Sennier, who surely
+appraised him with one swift, almost cruelly intelligent glance.
+
+His French! His French! Charmian trembled for it, for him because of it.
+If Mrs. Mansfield could have known how solicitous, how tender, how
+motherly, the girl felt at that moment under her mask of shining,
+radiant hardness! But Mrs. Mansfield was glancing about the house with
+grave and even troubled eyes.
+
+Heath was talking to Madame Sennier. He was even sitting down beside
+her. She spoke, evidently with volubility, making rapid gestures with
+her hands. Then she paused. She was listening attentively to Heath. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Elliot listened, too, as if absorbed. Heath's French must
+really be excellent. Why had he--? If only she could hear what he was
+saying! She tingled with curiosity. How he held them, those three
+people! From here he looked distinguished, interesting. He stood out
+even in this crowd as an interesting man. Madame Sennier made an upward
+movement of her head, full of will. She put out her hand, and laid it on
+Heath's arm. Now they all seemed to be talking together. Madame Sennier
+looked radiant, triumphant, even autocratic. She pointed toward the
+stage emphatically, made elaborate descriptive movements with her hands.
+A bell sounded somewhere. Heath got up. In a moment he and Max Elliot
+had left the box together. The two women were alone. They leaned toward
+each other apparently in earnest conversation.
+
+"I know they are talking about him! I know they are!"
+
+Charmian actually formed the words with her lips. The curtain rose as
+Heath quietly entered the box. Charmian did not turn to him or look at
+him then. Only when the act was over did she move and say:
+
+"Well, Mr. Heath, your French evidently comes at call."
+
+"What--oh, we were talking in English!"
+
+"Madame Sennier speaks English?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Excellently!"
+
+Charmian felt disappointed.
+
+"Is she happy?" she asked, moving her hand on the edge of the box.
+
+"She seems so."
+
+"Did you tell her what you thought?"
+
+"Yes," said Heath.
+
+His voice had become suddenly deeper, more expressive.
+
+"I told her that I thought it wonderful. And so it is. She said--in
+French this: 'Ah, my friend, wait till the last act. Then it is no
+longer the earthly Paradise!'"
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then Charmian said, in a voice that
+sounded rather dry:
+
+"You liked her?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes, I think I did. We were all rather carried away, I
+suppose."
+
+"Carried away! By what?"
+
+"Well, it is evidently a great moment in Madame Sennier's life. One must
+sympathize."
+
+Charmian looked and saw two spots of color burning high up on his
+cheeks. His voice had suddenly quivered.
+
+"I should think so," said Mrs. Mansfield. "This evening probably means
+more to Madame Sennier even than to her husband."
+
+Charmian said nothing more till the end of the evening. Beneath the
+radiant coolness of her demeanor, the air of triumphant self-possession,
+she was secretly quivering with excitement. She feared to betray
+herself. Soon she was spellbound by the music of the last act and by the
+wonderful performance of Annie Meredith. As she listened, leaning
+forward in the box, and always feeling intensely the nearness to her of
+Heath, and of Heath's strong musical talent, she remembered something
+she had once said in the drawing-room in Berkeley Square, "We want a new
+note." Here was the new note in French music, the new talent given to
+the wondering and delighted world to-night. To-morrow doubtless Europe
+and America would know that the husband of the red-haired woman opposite
+had taken his place among the famous men to whom the world must pay
+attention. From to-morrow thousands of art lovers would be looking
+toward Jacques Sennier with expectation, the curious expectation of
+those who crave for fresh food on which they may feed their intellects,
+and their souls. The great tonic of a new development in art was
+offered to all those who cared to take it by the man who would probably
+be staring from behind the footlights at the crowd in a few moments.
+
+If only the new note had been English!
+
+"It shall be! It shall be!" Charmian repeated to herself.
+
+She looked again and again at Madame Sennier, striving to grasp the
+secret of her will for another, even while she gave herself to the
+enchantment of the music. But for that woman in all probability the
+music would never have been given life. Somewhere, far down in the
+mystery of an individual, it would have lain, corpse-like. A woman had
+willed that it should live. She deserved the homage she had received,
+and would receive to-night. For she had made her man do a great thing,
+because she had helped him to understand his own greatness.
+
+Suddenly, out of the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the
+music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to
+detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the
+Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so
+now she seemed to be aware that the future would show a brilliant crowd
+assembled in some great theater, not for Jacques Sennier, but for one
+near her. Really she was violently willing that it should be so. But she
+thought she was receiving--from whom, or from what, she could not
+tell--a mysterious message.
+
+And the red-haired woman's place was filled by another.
+
+At last the curtain fell on the final scene, and the storm which meant a
+triumph was unchained. Heath sprang up from his seat, carried away by a
+generous enthusiasm. He did not know how to be jealous of anyone who
+could do a really fine thing. Charmian, in the midst of the uproar,
+heard him shouting "Bravo!" behind her, in a voice quick with
+excitement. His talent was surely calling to a brother. The noise all
+over the house strengthened gradually, then abruptly rose like a great
+wave. A small, thin, and pale man, with a big nose, a mighty forehead,
+scanty black hair and beard, and blinking eyes, had stepped out before
+the curtain. He leaned forward, made a movement as if to retreat, was
+stopped by a louder roar, stepped quickly to the middle of the small
+strip of stage that was visible, and stood still with his big head
+slightly thrust out toward the multitude which acclaimed him.
+
+Charmian turned round to Claude Heath, who towered above her. He did not
+notice her movement. He was gazing at the stage while he violently
+clapped his hands. She gazed up at him. He felt her eyes, leaned down.
+For a moment they looked at each other, while the noise in the house
+increased. Claude saw that Charmian wanted to speak to him--and
+something else. After a moment, during which the blood rose in his
+cheeks and forehead, and he felt as if he were out in wind and rain, in
+falling snow and stern sunshine, he said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be--for you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In the studio of Mullion House that night, Harriet, moving softly,
+placed a plate of sandwiches and a long bottle of Rhine wine before she
+went up to bed. Moonlight shone on the scrap of garden, gleamed on the
+leaded panes of the studio windows, from which the orange-colored
+curtains were drawn back. The aspect of the big room had changed because
+it was summer. It looked bigger, less cosy without a fire. One lamp was
+lighted and cast a gentle glow over the books that lay near it, and over
+the writing-table on which there were sheets of manuscript music. The
+piano stood open. A spray of white roses in a tall vase looked spectral
+against the shadows. After Harriet's departure the clock ticked for a
+long time in an empty room.
+
+It was nearly two o'clock, and the moon was waning, when the studio door
+was opened to let in Heath. He was alone. Holding the door with one
+hand, he stood and stared at the room, examined it with a sort of
+excited and close attention. Then he took off his hat, shut the door,
+laid hat and coat on the sofa, went to the table where Harriet had put
+the tray, and poured out a glass of wine. He sighed, looked at the gold
+of the wine, made beautiful by the lamplight, drank it, and sat down in
+the worn armchair which faced the line of window. Then he lit a cigar,
+leaned back, and smoked, keeping his eyes on the glass.
+
+Upon the leaded panes the faint silver shifted, faded, and presently
+died. Heath watched, and thought, "The moon gone!" He did not feel as if
+he could ever wish to sleep again. The excitement within him was like a
+ravaging disease. He was capable of excitement that never comes to the
+ordinary man, although he took sedulous care to hide that fact. His
+imagination bristled like a spear held by one alert for attack. What was
+life going to do to him? What was he going to let it do?
+
+Charmian Mansfield loved him, and believed in his genius, as he did not
+believe, or had not till now believed in it. He was loved, he was
+believed in, by the thin mystery of a modern girl, who had known many
+men with talents, with names, with big reputations. Under that
+triumphant composure, that almost cruel banter, that whimsical airy
+contempt, that cool frivolity of the minx, there was emotion, there was
+love for him and for his talent. Always that night he thought of his
+talent in connection with Charmian's love, he scarcely knew why. For how
+long had she loved him? And why did she love him? He thought of his
+body, and it surprised him that she loved that. He thought of his mind,
+his imagination, his temper, his tricks, his faults, his habits. He
+thought of his deep reserve, and of the intense emotion he sometimes
+felt when he was quite alone and composing. Sometimes he felt like a
+great fire then. Sometimes he felt brutal, almost savage, decisive in a
+sense that was surely cruel. Did she suspect all that? Did she love all
+that without consciously suspecting it? Sometimes, when he had been
+working very hard, overworking perhaps, he felt inclined to do evil. If
+she knew that!
+
+But she did not, she could not know him. Why, then, did she love him?
+Heath was not a conceited man, but he did not at this moment doubt
+Charmian's love for him. Though he was sometimes child-like, and could
+be, like most men, very blind, he had a keen intellect which could
+reason about psychology. He knew how women love success. He knew how, in
+a moment of excitement such as that at the end of the opera, when
+Jacques Sennier came before the curtain, they instinctively concentrate
+on the man who has made the success. He knew, or divined, what woman's
+concentration is. And he realized the bigness of the tribute paid to him
+by Charmian's abrupt detachment from the hour and the man, by the sweep
+of her brain and her heart to him. Any conqueror of women might have
+been proud of such a tribute, have considered it rare. Her eyes, her
+voice, in the tempest they had thrilled him. He had been only thinking
+of Sennier's music and of Sennier, of art and the human being behind it.
+Nothing within him had consciously called to Charmian. Nor had there--he
+felt sure now--been the unconscious call sent out by the man of talent
+who feels himself left out in the cold, who cannot stifle the greedy
+voice of the jealousy which he despises. No, the initiative had been
+wholly hers. And something irresistible must have moved her, driven her,
+to do what she had done. She must have been mastered by an impulse bred
+out of strong excitement. She had been mastered by an impulse.
+
+"All this ought to be for you. Some day it will be for you."
+
+She had only whispered the words, but they had seemed to stab him, with
+so much mental force had she sent them out. Mrs. Mansfield had not heard
+them. And how extraordinary Charmian's eyes had been during that moment
+when she and he had gazed at one another. He had not known eyes could
+look like that, as if the whole spirit of a human being were crouching
+in them, intent. How far away from the eyes the human spirit must often
+be!
+
+As Heath thought of Charmian's eyes he felt as if he knew very little of
+real life yet.
+
+She had turned away. Again and again Jacques Sennier had been called. He
+had returned with Annie Meredith, to whom he had made the gift of a
+splendid role. They shook hands before the audience, not perfunctorily,
+but as if they loved one another, were bound together, comrades in the
+beautiful. He--Heath--had stood upright again, had gone on applauding
+with the rest. But his thoughts had then all been on himself. "If all
+this were for me! If I should ever have such an hour in my life, such a
+tribute as this! If within me is the capacity to conquer all these
+diverse natures and temperaments, to weld them together in a common
+desire, the desire to show thankfulness for what a man has been able to
+give them!" And he had thrilled for the first time with a fierce new
+longing, the longing for the best that is meant by fame.
+
+This longing persisted now.
+
+Heath had left Mrs. Mansfield and Charmian under the arcade of the Opera
+House, after putting them into their car. The crush coming out had been
+great. They had had to wait for nearly half an hour in the vestibule.
+During that time the Mansfields had talked to many friends. Charmian
+had completely regained her composure. She had introduced Heath to
+several people, among others to Kit and Margot Drake, who spoke of
+nothing but the opera and its composer and Annie Meredith. The vestibule
+was full of the voices of praise. Everybody seemed unusually excited.
+Paul Lane had actually come up to them with beads of perspiration
+standing on his forehead, and his eyes shining with excitement.
+
+"This is a red-letter night in my life," he had said. "I have felt a
+strong and genuine emotion. There's a future for music, after all, and a
+big one. If only there were one or two more Jacques Senniers!"
+
+Even then Charmian had not looked again at Heath. She had answered
+lightly.
+
+"Perhaps there are. Who knows? Even Monsieur Sennier was practically
+unknown four hours ago."
+
+"There are not many parts of the civilized world in which his name will
+be unknown in four days from now," said Paul Lane, "or even in
+twenty-four hours. I'm going to meet him and his wife at supper at
+Adelaide Shiffney's, so I must say good-night--oh, and good-night, Mr.
+Heath."
+
+Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath.
+
+Claude had walked all the way home alone slowly. He had passed through
+Piccadilly Circus, through Regent Street, through Oxford Street, along
+the north side of the closed and deserted Park on which the faint
+moonlight lay. When he reached his door he had not gone in. He had
+turned, had paced up and down. The sight of a very large policeman
+looking attentive, then grimly inquiring, then crudely suspicious, had
+finally decided him to enter his house.
+
+What was life going to do to him if he did not hold back, did not
+persist any longer in his mania for refusal? There was a new world
+spread out before him. He stood upon its border. He wanted to step into
+it. But something within him, something that seemed obscure, hesitated,
+was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
+wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
+him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
+said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
+whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
+instinct of self-preservation."
+
+What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?
+
+Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
+greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
+what he had to say about her husband's opera.
+
+"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
+he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
+full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."
+
+Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?
+
+Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
+he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
+action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
+leap.
+
+He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
+manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
+But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
+beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
+something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
+forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
+He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
+refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
+this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
+crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
+remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
+passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
+a restricted light.
+
+The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
+he lusted for fame.
+
+Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."
+
+Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
+something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
+surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed
+venom, and that she alone could supply it.
+
+The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew
+nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
+force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
+was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
+have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
+greatness.
+
+He loved her just then for that.
+
+"Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath."
+
+Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.
+
+Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
+room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
+dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
+his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
+inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
+Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
+reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
+atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
+opera here. In vain to try.
+
+With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
+snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
+across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
+futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
+unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
+bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
+resolved to have done with it.
+
+Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
+down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
+but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
+whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
+known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
+ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
+the instinct of love.
+
+He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
+even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
+guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
+blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
+it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.
+
+In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
+eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
+silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
+of the night falling toward the arms of dawn.
+
+Claude walked swiftly on, turned the corner, and came into the
+thoroughfare which skirts Kensington Gardens and the Park. Some fifty
+yards away there was a letter box. He hurried toward it, driven on by
+defiance of that within him which would fain have held him back, by the
+blind instinct to trample which sometimes takes hold of a strong and
+emotional nature in a moment of unusual excitement.
+
+"The great refuser! No, I'll not be that any longer."
+
+As he drew near to the letter box he felt that till now he had been a
+composer. Henceforth he would be a man. He had lived for an art.
+Henceforth he would live for life, and would make life feel his art.
+
+He dropped his letter into the box.
+
+In falling out of his sight it made a faint, uneasy noise.
+
+Claude stood there like one listening.
+
+The grayness seemed to grow slightly more livid over the tree-tops and
+behind the branches. The letter did not speak again. So he thought of
+that tiny noise, as the speech of the dropping letter. It must have slid
+down against the side of the box. Now it was lying still. There was
+nothing more for him to do but to go home. Yet he waited before the
+letter box, with his eyes fixed upon the small white plaque on which was
+printed the time of the next delivery--eight-forty A.M.
+
+Was it the sound, or was it the movement preceding the sound, which had
+worked a cold change in his heart? He felt almost stunned by what he had
+done, like a man who strikes and sees the result of his blow, who has
+not measured its force, and sees his victim measure it. Eight-forty
+A.M.
+
+A step sounded. He looked, and saw in the distance the large policeman
+slowly advancing.
+
+When he was again in his house he closed the front door softly, and went
+once more to the studio. He looked round it, examining the familiar
+objects: the piano, his work table, the books, the deep, well-worn,
+homely chairs, the rugs which Mrs. Mansfield had liked. On the floor, by
+his table, lay the fragments of manuscript music. How had he come to
+tear it, his last composition?
+
+He went over to the window, opened a square of the glass, sat down on
+the window-seat, and looked out to the tiny garden. A faint smell, as of
+dewy earth, rose from it, fresh, delicate, and--somehow--pathetic. As
+Claude leaned on the window-sill this frail scent, which seemed part of
+the dying night, connected itself in his mind with his past life. He
+drew it in through his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
+floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
+making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
+guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
+a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
+himself?
+
+The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
+at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
+written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
+He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
+brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
+feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
+given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
+broken with the old life.
+
+At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
+would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
+probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face--a feeling of desperation
+seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
+that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
+clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
+to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
+words. The thought of Madame Sennier and all she had done for her
+husband had winged his pen.
+
+The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
+had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
+poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
+No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
+in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
+this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
+impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
+mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
+little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
+carried him away in the theater.
+
+Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
+was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
+never written that letter of love to Charmian.
+
+The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
+fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
+looked at them, and thought:
+
+"If only my letter lay there instead!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
+Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
+strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
+of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
+possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.
+
+For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
+Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
+Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
+feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:
+
+"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
+Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
+by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"
+
+Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
+door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.
+
+Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
+Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
+life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
+fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
+to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
+she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
+ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
+emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
+laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
+with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
+not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.
+
+The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
+Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.
+
+Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
+Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
+obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
+almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
+so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
+an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
+life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
+change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
+be divorced from him. An atmosphere had enfolded him, had become as it
+were part of him, drowning his life in its peculiar influence. He must
+emerge from it. But he would never be able to emerge from it in the
+little old house which he loved. So he got rid of his lease, with
+Charmian's acquiescence.
+
+She did not really want to live on the north side of the Park. And the
+neighborhood was "Bayswatery." But she guessed that Claude was not quite
+happy in deserting his characteristic roof-tree, and she eagerly sought
+for another. It was found in Kensington Square. Several interesting and
+even famous persons lived there. The houses were old, not large,
+compact. They had a "flavor" of culture, which set them apart from the
+new and mushroom dwellings of London, and from all flats whatsoever.
+They were suitable to "artistic" people. A great actress, much sought
+after in the social world, had lived for years in this square. A famous
+musician was opposite to her. A baronet, who knew how to furnish, and
+whose wife gave delightful small parties, was next door but three. A
+noted novelist had just moved there from a flat in Queen Anne's
+Mansions. In fact, there was a cachet on Kensington Square.
+
+And though it was rather far out, you can go almost anywhere in ten
+minutes if you can afford to take a taxi-cab. Charmian and Claude had
+fifteen hundred a year between them. She had no doubt of their being
+able to take taxi-cabs on such an income. And, later on, of course
+Claude would make a lot of money. Jacques Sennier's opera was bringing
+him in thousands of pounds, and he had received great offers for future
+works from America, where _Le Paradis Terrestre_ had just made a furore
+at the Metropolitan Opera House. He and Madame Sennier were in New York
+now, having a more than lovely time. The generous American nation had
+taken them both to its heart. Charmian had read several accounts of
+their triumphs, artistic and social, in English newspapers. She had said
+to herself "Ours presently!" And with renewed and vital energy, she had
+devoted herself afresh to the task of "getting into" the new house.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had helped her, with sober love and devotion.
+
+Now at last the house was ready, four servants were engaged, and the
+ceremony of hanging the _cremaillere_ was being duly accomplished.
+
+The Heaths' house-warming had brought together Charmian's friends.
+Heath, true to his secret determination to break away from his old life,
+had wished that it should be so. His few intimates in London were not in
+the Mansfields' set, and would not "mix in" very well with Kit and
+Margot Drake, the Elliots, the Burningtons, Paul Lane, and the many
+other people with whom Charmian was intimate; who went where she had
+always been accustomed to go, and who spoke her language. So it was
+Charmian's party and Heath played the part of host to about fifty
+people, most of whom were almost, or quite, strangers to him.
+
+And he played it well, though perhaps with a certain anxiety which he
+could not quite conceal. For he was in a new country with people to all
+of whom it was old.
+
+Late in the evening he at last had a few minutes alone with his
+mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa
+in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the
+Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child
+in a white frock, standing against a pale blue background, by
+Burne-Jones, he felt like a man who had been far away from himself, and
+who was suddenly again with himself. Mrs. Mansfield's quiet tenderness
+flowed over him, but unostentatiously. She had much to conceal from
+Claude now; her understanding of the struggle, the fear, the almost
+desperate determination within him, her deep sympathy with him in his
+honorable conduct, her anxiety about his future with her child, her
+painful comprehension of Charmian, which did not abate her love for the
+girl, but perhaps strengthened it, giving it wings of pity. She was one
+of those middle-aged people of great intelligence, who have learned
+through deep experience, to divine. Her power had not failed her during
+the period of her daughter's engagement to Heath. If she had not acted
+strongly it was because she was supremely delicate in mind, and had a
+great respect for personal liberty. She disliked intensely those elderly
+people who are constantly trying to interfere with the happiness of
+youth. Perhaps she was overscrupulous in her reserve. Perhaps she should
+have acted on the prompting of her quick understanding. She did not. It
+seemed to her that she could not.
+
+She could not tell her child that Claude Heath was not really in love.
+Nor could she tell Charmian that an affection threaded through and
+through with a personal, and rather vulgar, ambition is not the kind of
+affection likely to form a firm basis for the building of happiness.
+
+So she had to hide her understanding, her regret, her anxiety. She alone
+knew whether pride helped her, perhaps had helped to prompt her, to
+reticence, to concealment. She had been Claude Heath's great friend. The
+jealousies of women are strong. She knew herself free from jealousy. But
+another woman, even her own daughter, might misunderstand. It was bitter
+to think so, but she did think so. And her lips were sealed. Beneath the
+more human fears in her crouched a fear that seemed apart, almost
+curiously isolated and very definite, the fear for Claude Heath's
+strange talent.
+
+On the night of the house-warming, as they sat together hearing the
+laughter, the buzz of talk, from those near them; as, a moment later,
+they heard those sounds diminish upon the narrow staircase, when
+everybody but themselves trooped down gaily to "play with a little food
+unceremoniously," as Charmian expressed it, Mrs. Mansfield found herself
+thinking of her first visit to the big studio in Mullion House, and of
+those Kings of the East whom the man beside her had made to live in her
+warm imagination.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said, when the human sounds in the house came up
+from under their feet.
+
+"From to-morrow!" she answered, looking at him with her strong, intense
+eyes.
+
+"From to-morrow--yes, Madre?"
+
+She put her thin and firm hand on his.
+
+"Life begins again, the life of work put off for a time. To-morrow you
+take it up once more."
+
+"Yes--yes!"
+
+He glanced about the pretty room, listened to the noise of the gaieties
+below them. Distinctly he heard Max Elliot's genial laugh.
+
+"Of course," he said. "I must start again on something. The question is,
+what on?"
+
+"Surely you have something in hand?"
+
+"I had. But--well, I've left it for so long that I don't know whether I
+could get back into the mood which enabled me to start it. I don't
+believe I could somehow. I think it would be best to begin on something
+quite fresh."
+
+"You know that. Do you think you will like the new workroom?"
+
+"Charmian has made it very pretty and cozy," he answered.
+
+His imaginative eyes looked suddenly distressed, almost persecuted, and
+he raised his eyebrows.
+
+"She is very clever at creating prettiness around her," he continued,
+after an instant of silence, during which Mrs. Mansfield looked down.
+"It is quite wonderful. And how energetic she is!"
+
+"Yes, Charmian can be very energetic when she likes. Adelaide Shiffney
+never turned up to-night."
+
+"She telegraphed this morning that she had to go over unexpectedly to
+Paris. Something to do with the Senniers probably. You know how devoted
+she is to him. And now he is the rage in America, Charmian says. Every
+day I expect to hear that Mrs. Shiffney had sailed for New York."
+
+He laughed, but not quite naturally.
+
+"What a change in his life that evening at Covent Garden made!" he
+added.
+
+"And what a change in yours!" was Mrs. Mansfield's thought.
+
+"He found himself, as people call it, on that night, I suppose," she
+said. "He is one of those men with a talent made for the great public.
+And he knew it, perhaps, for the first time that night. He is launched
+now on his destined career."
+
+"You believe in destiny?"
+
+She detected the sadness she had surprised in his eyes in his voice now.
+
+"Perhaps in our making of it."
+
+"Rather than in some great Power's imposing of it upon us?"
+
+"Ah, it's so difficult to know! When I was a child we had a game we
+loved. We went into a large room which was pitch dark. A person was
+hidden in it who had a shilling. Whichever child found that person had
+the shilling. There were terror and triumph in that game. It was
+scarcely like a game, it roused our feelings so strongly."
+
+"It is not everyone's destiny to find the holder of the shilling," said
+Claude.
+
+For a moment their eyes met. Claude suddenly reddened.
+
+"Have I? Does she suspect? Does she know?" went through his mind. And
+even Mrs. Mansfield felt embarrassed. For in that moment it was as if
+they had spoken to each other with a terrible frankness despite the
+silence of their lips.
+
+"Shan't we go down?" said Claude. "Surely you want something to eat,
+Madre?"
+
+"No, really. And I like a quiet talk with my new son."
+
+He said nothing, but she saw the strong affection in his face, lighting
+it, and she knew Claude loved her almost as a son may love a perfect
+mother. She wished that she dared to trust that love completely. But the
+instinctive reserve of the highly civilized held her back. And she only
+said:
+
+"You must not let marriage interfere too much with your work, Claude. I
+care very much for that. For years your work was everything to you. It
+can't be that, it oughtn't to be that now. But I want your marriage with
+Charmian to help, not to hinder you. Be true to your own instinct in
+your art and surely all must go well."
+
+"Yes, yes. To-morrow I must make a fresh start. I could never be an
+idler. I must--I must try to use life as food for my art!"
+
+He was speaking out his thought of the night when he wrote his letter to
+Charmian. But how cold, how doubtful it seemed when clothed in words.
+
+"Some can do that," said Mrs. Mansfield. "But, as I remember saying on
+the night of Charmian's return from Algiers, Swinburne's food was
+Putney. There is no rule. Follow your instinct."
+
+She spoke with a sort of strong pressure. And again their eyes met.
+
+"How well she understands me!" he thought. "Does she understand me too
+well?"
+
+He became hot, then cold, at the thought that perhaps she had divined
+his lack of love for her daughter.
+
+For marriage with Charmian, and three months of intimate intercourse
+with her, had not made Claude love her. He admired her appearance. He
+felt, sometimes strongly, her physical attraction. Her slim charm did
+not leave him unmoved. Often he felt obliged to respect her energy, her
+vitality. But anything that is not love is far away from love. In
+marrying Charmian, Claude had made a secret sacrifice on the altar of
+honor. He had done "the decent thing." Impulse had driven him into a
+mistake and he had "paid for it" like a man without a word of complaint
+to anyone. He had hoped earnestly, almost angrily, that love would be
+suddenly born out of marriage, that thus his mistake would be cancelled,
+his right dealing rewarded beautifully.
+
+It had not been so. So he walked in the vast solitude of secrecy. He had
+become a fine humbug, he who by nature was rather drastically sincere.
+And he knew not how to face the future with hope, seeing no outlet from
+the cage into which he had walked. To-night, as Mrs. Mansfield spoke,
+with that peculiar firm pressure, he thought: "Perhaps I shall find
+salvation in work." If she had divined the secret he could never tell
+her perhaps she had seen the only way out. The true worker, the worker
+who is great, uses the troubles, the sorrows, even the great tragedies
+of life as material, combines them in a whole that is precious, lays
+them as balm, or as bitter tonic on the wounds of the world. And so all
+things in his life work together for good.
+
+"May it be so with me!" was Claude's silent prayer that night.
+
+When their guests were gone, Charmian sat down on a very low chair
+before the wood fire--she insisted on wood instead of coal--in the first
+drawing-room.
+
+"Don't let us go to bed for a few minutes yet, Claude," she said. "You
+aren't sleepy, are you?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+He sat down on the chintz-covered sofa near her.
+
+"It went off well, didn't it?"
+
+She was looking into the fire. Her narrow, long-fingered hands were
+clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a
+yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it
+looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her
+face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance.
+
+"Yes, I think it did."
+
+"They all liked you."
+
+"I'm glad!"
+
+"You make an excellent host, Claudie; you are so ready, so sympathetic!
+You listen so well, and look as if you really cared, whether you do or
+not. It's such a help to a man in his career to have a manner like
+yours. But I remember noticing it the first time I ever met you in Max
+Elliot's music-room. What a shame of Adelaide Shiffney not to come!"
+
+Her voice had suddenly changed.
+
+"Did you want Mrs. Shiffney to come so particularly?" Claude asked, not
+without surprise.
+
+"Yes, I did. Not for myself, of course. I don't pretend to be fond of
+her, though I don't dislike her! But she ought to have come after
+accepting. People thought she was coming to-night. I wonder why she
+rushed off to Paris like that?"
+
+"I should think it was probably something to do with the Senniers. Max
+Elliot told me just now that she lives and breathes Sennier."
+
+Claude spoke with a quiet humor, and quite without anger.
+
+"Max does exactly the same," said Charmian. "It really becomes rather
+silly--in a man."
+
+"But Sennier is worth it. Nothing spurious about him."
+
+"I never said there was. But still--Margot is rather tiresome, too, with
+her rages first for this person and then for the other."
+
+"Who is it now?"
+
+"Oh, she's Sennier-mad like the others."
+
+"Still?"
+
+"Yes, after all these months. She's actually going over to America, I
+believe, just to hear the _Paradis_ once at the Metropolitan. Five days
+out, five back, and one night there. Isn't it absurd? She's had it put
+in the _Daily Mail_. And then she says she can't think how things about
+her get into the papers! Margot really is rather a humbug!"
+
+"Still, she admires the right thing when she admires Sennier's talent,"
+said Claude, with a sort of still decision.
+
+Charmian turned her eyes away from the fire and looked at him.
+
+"How odd you are!" she said, after a little pause.
+
+"Why? In what way am I odd?"
+
+"In almost every way, I think. But it's all right. You ought to be odd."
+
+"What do you mean, Charmian?"
+
+"Jacques Sennier's odd, extraordinary. People like that always are. You
+are."
+
+She was examining him contemplatively, as a woman examines a possession,
+something that the other women have not. Her look made him feel very
+restive and intensely reserved.
+
+"I doubt if I am the least like Jacques Sennier," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are. I know."
+
+His rather thin and very mobile lips tightened, as if to keep back a
+rush of words.
+
+"You don't know yourself," Charmian continued, still looking at him with
+those contemplative and possessive eyes. "Men don't notice what is part
+of themselves."
+
+"Do women?"
+
+"What does it matter? I am thinking about you, about my man."
+
+There was a long pause, which Claude filled by getting up and lighting a
+cigarette. A hideous, undressed sensation possessed him, the undressed
+sensation of the reserved nature that is being stared at. He said to
+himself: "It is natural that she should look at me like this, speak to
+me like this. It is perfectly natural." But he hated it. He even felt as
+if he could not endure it much longer, and would be obliged to do
+something to stop it.
+
+"Don't sit down again," said Charmian, as he turned with the cigarette
+in his mouth.
+
+She got up with lithe ease, like one uncurling.
+
+"Let's go and look at your room, where you're going to begin work
+to-morrow."
+
+She put her hand on his arm. And her hand was possessive as her eyes had
+been.
+
+Claude's workroom was at the back of the house on the floor above the
+drawing-room. An upright piano replaced the grand piano of Mullion
+House, now dedicated to the drawing-room. There was a large flat
+writing-table in front of the window, where curtains of Irish frieze,
+dark green in color, hung shutting out the night and the ugliness at the
+back of Kensington Square. The walls were nearly covered with books. At
+the bottom of the bookcases were large drawers for music. A Canterbury
+held more music, and was placed beside the writing-table. The carpet was
+dark green without any pattern. In the fireplace were some curious
+Morris tiles, representing AEneas carrying Anchises, with Troy burning in
+the background. There were two armchairs, and a deep sofa covered in
+dark green. A photograph of Charmian stood on the writing-table. It
+showed her in evening dress, holding her Conder fan, and looking out
+with half-shut eyes. There was in it a hint of the assumed dreaminess
+which very sharp-witted modern maidens think decorative in photographs,
+the "I follow an ideal" expression, which makes men say, "What a
+charming girl! Looks as if she'd got something in her, too!"
+
+"It's a dear little room, isn't it, Claude?" said Charmian.
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"You really like it, don't you? You like its atmosphere?"
+
+"I think you've done it delightfully. I was saying to Madre only this
+evening how extraordinarily clever you are in creating prettiness around
+you."
+
+"Were you? How nice of you."
+
+She laid her cheek against his shoulder.
+
+"You'll be able to work here?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Let's shut the door, and just _feel_ the room for a minute."
+
+"All right."
+
+He shut the door.
+
+"Don't let us speak for a moment," she whispered.
+
+She was sitting now on the deep sofa just beyond the writing-table.
+Claude stood quite still. And in the silence which followed her words he
+strove to realize whether he would be able to work in the little room.
+Would anything come to him here? His eyes rested on Anchises, crouched
+on the back of his son, on the burning city of Troy. He felt confused,
+strange, and then _depayse_. That word alone meant what he felt just
+then. Ah, the little house with the one big room looking out on to the
+scrap of garden, yellow-haired Fan, Harriet discreet unto dumbness, Mrs.
+Searle with her scraps of wisdom--he with his freedom!
+
+The room was a cage, wire bars everywhere. Never could he work in it!
+
+"It is good for work, isn't it, Claudie? Even poor little I can feel
+that. What wonderful things you are going to do here. As wonderful as--"
+She checked herself abruptly.
+
+"As what?" he asked, striving to force an interest, to banish his secret
+desperation.
+
+"I won't tell you now. Some day--in a year, two years--I'll tell you."
+
+Her eyes shone. He thought they looked almost greedy.
+
+"When my man's done something wonderful!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+In Charmian's conception of the perfect helpmate for a great man
+self-sacrifice shone out as the first of the virtues. She must sacrifice
+herself to Claude, must regulate her life so that his might glide
+smoothly, without any friction, to the appointed goal. She must be
+patient, understanding, and unselfish. But she must also be firm at the
+right moment, be strong in judgment, be judicious, the perfect critic as
+well as the ardent admirer. During her life among clever and well-known
+men she had noticed how the mere fact of marriage often seems to make a
+man think highly of the intellect of his chosen woman. Again and again
+she had heard some distinguished writer or politician, wedded to
+somebody either quite ordinary, or even actually stupid, say: "I'd take
+my wife's judgment before anyone's," or "My wife sees more clearly for a
+man than anyone I know." She had known painters and sculptors submit
+their works to the criticism of women totally ignorant in the arts,
+simply because those women had had the faultless taste to marry them. If
+such women exercised so strong an influence over their men, what should
+hers be over Claude? For she had been well educated, was trained in
+music, had always moved in intellectual and artistic sets, and was
+certainly not stupid. Indeed, now that the main stream of her life was
+divided from her mother's, she often felt as if she were decidedly
+clever. Susan Fleet, long ago, had roused up her will. Since that day
+she had never let it sleep. And her success in marrying Claude had made
+her rely on her will, rely on herself. She was a girl who could "carry
+things through," a girl who could make of life a success. As a young
+married woman she showed more of assurance than she had showed as an
+unmarried girl. There was more of decision in her expression and her way
+of being. She was resolved to impress the world, of course for her
+husband's sake.
+
+Life in the house in Kensington had to be arranged for Claude with
+every elaborate precaution. That must be the first move in the campaign
+secretly planned out by Charmian, and now about to be carried through.
+
+On the morning after the house-warming, when a late breakfast was
+finished, but while they were still at the breakfast-table in the long
+and narrow dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square, Charmian
+said to her husband:
+
+"I've been speaking to the servants, Claude. I've told them about being
+very quiet to-day."
+
+He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "I mean why specially to-day?"
+
+"Because of your composing. Alice is a good girl, but she is a little
+inclined to be noisy sometimes. I've spoken to her seriously about it."
+
+Alice was the parlor-maid. Charmian would have preferred to have a man
+to answer the door, but she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she
+had done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said nothing, Charmian
+continued:
+
+"And another thing! I've told them all that you're never to be disturbed
+when you're in your own room, that they're never to come to you with
+notes, or the post, never to call you to the telephone. I want you to
+feel that once you are inside your own room you are absolutely safe,
+that it is sacred ground."
+
+"Thank you, Charmian."
+
+He pushed his cup farther away, with a movement that was rather brusque,
+and got up.
+
+"What about lunch to-day? Do you eat lunch when you are composing? Do
+you want something sent up to you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall want any lunch to-day. You
+see we've breakfasted late. Don't bother about me."
+
+"It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie. But would you like a cup of
+coffee, tea, anything at one o'clock?"
+
+"Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do."
+
+He made a movement. Charmian got up.
+
+"I do long to know what you are going to work on," she said, in a
+changed, almost mysterious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.
+
+She came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"Ever since I first heard your music--you remember, two days after we
+were engaged--I've longed to be able to do a little something to help
+you on. You know what I mean. In the woman's way, by acting as a sort of
+buffer between you and all the small irritations of life. We who can't
+create can sometimes be of use to those who can. We can keep others from
+disturbing the mystery. Let me do that. And, in return, let me be in the
+secret, won't you?"
+
+Claude stood rather stiffly under her hands.
+
+"You are kind, good. But--but don't make any bother about me in the
+house. I'd rather you didn't. Let everything just go on naturally. I
+don't want to be a nuisance."
+
+"You couldn't be. And you will let me?"
+
+"Perhaps--when I know it myself."
+
+He made a little rather constrained laugh.
+
+"One's got to think, try. One doesn't always know directly what one
+wishes to do, can do."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+She took away her hands gently.
+
+"Now I don't exist till you want me to again."
+
+Claude went up to the little room at the back of the house. At this
+moment he would gladly, thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
+that he was expected to go there. Five women, his wife and the four
+maids, expected him to go there. So he went. He shut himself in, and
+remained there, caged.
+
+It was a still and foggy day of frost. In the air, even within the
+house, there was a feeling of snow, light, thin, and penetrating. London
+seemed peculiarly silent. And the silence seemed to have something to do
+with the fog, the frost, and the coming snow. When the door of his room
+was shut Claude stood by his table, then before the fire, feeling
+curiously empty headed, almost light headed. He stared at the fire,
+listened to its faint crackling, and felt as if his life were a hollow
+shell.
+
+Probably he had stood thus for a considerable time--he did not know
+whether for five minutes or an hour--when he was made self-conscious by
+an event in the house. He heard two women's voices in conversation,
+apparently on the staircase.
+
+One of them said:
+
+"The duster, I tell you!"
+
+The other replied:
+
+"Well, I didn't leave it. Ask Fanny, can't you!"
+
+"Fanny doesn't know."
+
+"She ought to know, then!"
+
+"Ought yourself! Fanny's no business with the duster no more than--"
+
+At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was
+Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:
+
+"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house.
+Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If
+you must speak, go downstairs."
+
+There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then
+again silence.
+
+Claude came away from the fire.
+
+"Your master is at work."
+
+He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost
+of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the
+devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he
+was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be
+doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen
+discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid
+musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her
+lap. And he ground his teeth.
+
+"I can't--I can't--I never shall be able to!"
+
+He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands.
+When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed,
+photographed eyes.
+
+Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing
+vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came
+up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by
+distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began,
+continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle
+of a phrase.
+
+Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had
+rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in
+the land without light.
+
+The master was working.
+
+But the master was not working.
+
+Day followed day, and Claude kept his secret, the secret that he was
+doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
+atmosphere created by Charmian.
+
+One thing specially troubled him.
+
+So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
+perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
+effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
+"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
+golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
+never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.
+
+But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
+young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
+lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
+this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
+he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
+rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
+account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
+art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
+sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
+masculinity.
+
+This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
+home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
+He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
+until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
+the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
+maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
+sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.
+
+During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
+for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
+Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And
+she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
+it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
+"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
+man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
+was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
+"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
+destined to conquer.
+
+All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
+surprised at the match. They recognized the worldly instinct in Charmian,
+which many of them shared, and could not quite understand why she had
+chosen Claude Heath as her husband. They had not heard much of him. He
+never went anywhere, was personally unknown to them. It seemed rather
+odd. They had scarcely thought Charmian Mansfield would make that kind
+of marriage. Of course he was a thorough gentleman, and a man with
+pleasant, even swiftly attractive manners. But still--! The general
+verdict was that Charmian must have fallen violently in love with the
+man.
+
+She felt the feelings of the "set." And she felt that she must justify
+her choice as soon as possible. To the set Claude Heath was simply a
+nobody. Charmian meant to turn him into a somebody.
+
+This turning of Claude into a somebody was to be the first really
+important step in her campaign on his behalf. It must be done subtly,
+delicately, but it must be done swiftly. She was secretly impatient to
+justify her choice.
+
+She had at first relied on Max Elliot to help her. He was an
+enthusiastic man and had influence. Unluckily she soon found that for
+the moment he was so busy adoring Jacques Sennier that he had no time to
+beat the big drum for another. Sennier had carried him off his feet, and
+Madame Sennier had "got hold of him." The last phrase was Charmian's. It
+was speedily evident to her that, womanlike, the Frenchwoman was not
+satisfied with the fact of her husband's immense success. She was
+determined that no rival should spring up to divide adorers into camps.
+No doubt she argued that there is in the musical world only a limited
+number of discriminating enthusiasts, capable of forming and fostering
+public opinion, of "giving a lead" to the critics, and through them to
+the world. She wanted them all for her husband. And their allegiance
+must be undivided. Although she was in New York, she had Max Elliot "in
+her pocket" in London. It was a feat which won Charmian's respect, but
+which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when
+she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was
+concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment
+want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a
+pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had
+taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of
+friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various
+admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had
+said, an extraordinary woman, had a keen eye to the main chance. She
+acted as a sort of agent to her husband, and was reported on all hands
+to be capable of driving a very hard bargain. She and Max Elliot were
+perpetually cabling to each other across the Atlantic, and Max was
+seriously thinking of imitating Margot Drake and "running over" to New
+York on the _Lusitania_. Only his business in London detained him. He
+spoke of Sennier invariably as "Jacques," of Madame Sennier as
+"Henriette." Living English composers scarcely existed any more in his
+sight. France was the country of music. Only from France could one
+expect anything of real value to the truly cultured.
+
+Charmian began to hate this absurd entente cordiale.
+
+Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide
+Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs.
+Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was
+married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs.
+Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on
+their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was,
+musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner
+there had been nobody to play upon feminine nerves as the little
+Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known
+society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears
+Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs.
+Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no
+use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the
+Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with
+Cowes.
+
+The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly.
+
+But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men
+have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the
+flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently
+began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get
+a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious
+talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on
+the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly
+herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom,"
+unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent
+nobody would pay any attention to what she said.
+
+"What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of
+work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed.
+She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude
+was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard
+his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the
+scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not
+the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind.
+The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the
+direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what
+he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers.
+
+One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park
+Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise,
+without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out
+definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present
+moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame
+Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more
+_engouee_ than ever.
+
+She had been as straw to the flame of American enthusiasm. All her
+individuality seemed to have been burnt out of her. She was at present
+only a sort of receptacle for Sennier-mania. In dress, hair, manner, and
+even gesture, she strove to reproduce Madame Sennier. For one of the
+most curious features of Sennier's vogue was the worship accorded by
+women as well as by men to his dominating wife. They talked and thought
+almost as much about her as they did about him. And though his was the
+might of genius, hers seemed to be the might of personality. The
+perpetual chanting of the Frenchwoman's praises had "got upon"
+Charmian's nerves. She felt this afternoon as if she could not bear it
+much longer, unless some outlet was provided for her secret desires. And
+she arrived at Kensington Square in a condition of suppressed nervous
+excitement.
+
+She paid the driver of the taxi-cab and rang the bell. She had forgotten
+to take her key. Alice answered the door.
+
+"Is Mr. Heath in?" asked Charmian.
+
+"He's been playing golf, ma'am. But he's just come in," answered Alice,
+a plump, soft-looking girl, with rather sulky blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, of course! It's Saturday."
+
+On Saturday Claude generally took a half-holiday, and went down to
+Richmond to play golf with a friend of his who lived there, an old
+Cornish chum called Tregorwan.
+
+"Where is Mr. Heath?" continued Charmian, standing in the little hall.
+
+"Having his tea in the drawing-room, ma'am."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+She took off her fur coat and went quickly upstairs. She did not care
+about golf, and to-day the mere sound of the name irritated her.
+Englishmen were always playing golf, she said to herself. Jacques
+Sennier did not waste his time on such things, she was sure. Then she
+remembered for how many hours every day Claude was shut up in his little
+room, how he always went there immediately after breakfast. And she
+realized the injustice of her dawning anger, and also her nervous state,
+and resolved to be very gentle and calm with Claude.
+
+It was a cold day at the end of March. She found him sitting near the
+wood fire in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with thick, heavily
+nailed boots, covered with dried mud, on his feet, and thick brown and
+red stockings on his legs. It was almost impossible to believe he was a
+musician. His hair had been freshly cut, but he had not "watered" it.
+Since his marriage Charmian had never allowed him to do that. He jumped
+up when he saw his wife. Intimacy never made Claude relax in courtesy.
+
+"I'm having tea very late," he said. "But I've only just got in."
+
+"I know. Sit down and go on, dear old boy. I'll come and sit with you.
+Don't you want more light?"
+
+"I like the firelight."
+
+He sat down again and lifted the teapot.
+
+"I shall spoil my dinner. But never mind."
+
+"You remember we're dining with Madre!"
+
+"Oh--to be sure!"
+
+"But not till half-past eight."
+
+She sat down with her back to the drawn window curtains at right angles
+to Claude. Alice had "shut up" early to make the drawing-room look cozy
+for Claude. The firelight played about the room, illuminating now one
+thing, now another, making Claude's face and head, sometimes his musical
+hands look Rembrandtesque, powerful, imaginative, even mysterious. Now
+that Charmian had sat down she lost her impression of the eternal
+golfer, received another impression which spurred her imagination.
+
+"I've been at the Drakes," she began. "Only a very few to welcome Margot
+back from New York."
+
+"Did she enjoy her visit?"
+
+"Immensely. She's--as she calls it--tickled to death with the Americans
+in their own country. She meant to stay only one night, but she was
+there three weeks. It seems all New York has gone mad over Jacques
+Sennier."
+
+"I'm glad they see how really fine his opera is," Claude said,
+seriously, even earnestly.
+
+"Margot says when the Americans like anything they are the most
+enthusiastic nation in the world."
+
+"If it is so it's a fine trait in the national character, I think."
+
+How impersonal he sounded. She longed for the creeping music of jealousy
+in his voice. If only Claude would be jealous of Sennier!
+
+She spoke lightly of other things, and presently said:
+
+"How is the work getting on?"
+
+There was a slight pause. Then Claude said:
+
+"The work?"
+
+"Yes, yours."
+
+She hesitated. There was something in her husband's personality that
+sometimes lay upon her like an embargo. She was conscious of this
+embargo now. But her nervous irritation made her determined to defy it.
+
+"Claudie," she went on, "you don't know, you can't know, how much I care
+for your work. It's part of you. It is you. You promised me once you
+would let me be in the secret. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Did I? When?"
+
+"The day after our party when you were going to begin work again. And
+now it's nearly two months."
+
+She stopped. He was silent. A flame burst out of a log in the grate and
+lit up strongly one half of his face. She thought it looked stern,
+almost fierce, and very foreign. Many Cornish people have Spanish blood
+in them, she remembered. That foreign look made her feel for a moment
+almost as if she were sitting with a stranger.
+
+"Nearly two months," she repeated in a more tentative voice.
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Yes. Don't you think I've been very patient?"
+
+"But, surely--surely--why should you want to know?"
+
+"I do want. Your work is your life. I want it to be mine, too."
+
+"Oh, it could never be that--the work of another."
+
+"I want to identify myself with you."
+
+There was another silence. And this time it was a long one. At last
+Claude moved, turned round to face Charmian fully, and said, with the
+voice of one making a strong, almost a desperate effort:
+
+"You wish to know what I've been working on during these weeks when I've
+been in my room?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I haven't been working on anything."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I haven't been working at all."
+
+"Not working!"
+
+"No."
+
+"But--you must--but we were all so quiet! I told Alice--"
+
+"I never asked you to."
+
+"No, but of course--but what have you been doing up there?"
+
+"Reading Carlyle's _French Revolution_ most of the time."
+
+"Carlyle! You've been reading Carlyle!"
+
+In her voice there was a sound of outrage. Claude got up and stood by
+the fire.
+
+"It isn't my fault," he said. "The truth is I can't work in that room. I
+can't work in this house."
+
+"But it's our home."
+
+"I know, but I can't work in it. Perhaps it's because of the maids,
+knowing they're creeping about, wondering--I don't know what it is. I've
+tried, but I can't do anything."
+
+"But--how dreadful! Nearly two months wasted!"
+
+He felt that she was condemning him, and a secret anger surged through
+him. His reserve, too, was suffering torment.
+
+"I'm sorry, Charmian. But I couldn't help it."
+
+"But then, why did you go up and shut yourself in day after day?"
+
+"I hoped to be able to do something."
+
+"But----"
+
+"And I saw you expected me to go."
+
+The truth was out. Claude felt, as he spoke it, as if he were tearing
+off clothes. How he loathed that weakness of his, which manifested
+itself in the sometimes almost uncontrollable instinct to give, or to
+try to give, others what they expected of him.
+
+"Expected you! But naturally--"
+
+"Yes, I know. Well, that's how it is! I can't work in this house."
+
+He spoke almost roughly now.
+
+"I don't want to assume any absurd artistic pose," he continued. "I hate
+the affectations sometimes supposed to belong to my profession. But it's
+no use pretending about a thing of this kind. There are some places,
+some atmospheres, if you like to use the word generally used, that help
+anyone who tries to create, and some that hinder. It's not only a matter
+of place, I suppose, but of people. This house is too small, or
+something. There are too many people in it. I feel that they are all
+bothering and wondering about me, treading softly for me." He threw out
+his hands. "I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm paralyzed here. I
+suppose you think I'm half mad."
+
+To his great surprise, she answered, in quite a different voice from the
+voice which had suggested outrage:
+
+"No, no; great artists are always like that. They are always
+extraordinary."
+
+There was a mysterious pleasure, almost gratification, in her voice.
+
+"You would be like that. I should have known."
+
+"Oh, as to that--"
+
+"I understand, Claudie. You needn't say any more."
+
+Claude turned rather brusquely round to face the fire. As he said
+nothing, Charmian continued:
+
+"What is to be done now? We have taken this house--"
+
+He wheeled round.
+
+"Of course we shall stay in this house. It suits us admirably. Besides,
+to move simply because--"
+
+"Your work comes before all."
+
+He compressed his lips. He began to hate his own talent.
+
+"I think the best thing to do," he said, "would be for me to look for a
+studio somewhere. I could easily find one, put a piano and a few chairs
+in, and go there every day to work. Lots of men do that sort of thing.
+It's like going to an office."
+
+"Capital!" she said. "Then you'll be quite isolated, and you'll get on
+ever so fast. Won't you?"
+
+"I think probably I could work."
+
+"And you will. Before we married you worked so hard. I want"--she got
+up, came to him, and put her hand in his--"I want to feel that marriage
+has helped you, not hindered you, in your career. I want to feel that I
+urge you on, don't hold you back."
+
+Claude longed to tell her to leave him alone. But he thought of coming
+isolation in the studio, and refrained. Bending down, he kissed her.
+
+"It will be all right," he said, "when I've got a place where I can be
+quite alone for some hours each day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+With an energy that was almost feverish, Charmian threw herself into the
+search for a studio. The little room had been a failure, through no
+fault of hers. She must make a success of the studio. She and Claude set
+forth together, and soon bent their steps toward Chelsea. There were
+studios to be had in Kensington, of course. But Claude happened to
+mention Chelsea, and at once Charmian took up the idea. The right
+atmosphere--that was the object of this new quest, the end and aim of
+their wanderings. If it were to be found in Chelsea, then in Chelsea
+Claude must make his daily habitation. Charmian seconded the Chelsea
+proposition with an enthusiasm that was almost a little anxious. Chelsea
+was so picturesque, so near the river, that somber and wonderful heart
+of London. Such interesting and famous people lived in Chelsea now, and
+had lived there in the past. She wondered they had not decided to live
+in Chelsea instead of in Kensington. But Claude was right, unerring in
+his judgment. Of course the studio must be in Chelsea.
+
+One was found not far from Glebe Place, in a large red building with an
+arched entrance, handsome steps, and several artistic-looking windows,
+with leaded panes and soda-water bottle grass. It was on the ground
+floor, but it was quiet, large but not enormous, and well-planned. It
+contained however, one unnecessary, though not unattractive, feature. At
+one end, on the left of the door, there was a platform reached by a
+flight of steps, and screened off with wood from the rest of the room.
+The caretaker, who had the key and showed them round, explained that
+this had been planned and put up by an Austrian painter, who used the
+chamber formed by the platform and the upper part of the screen as a
+bedroom, and the space below, roofed by the platform as a kitchen.
+
+The rent was one hundred pounds a year.
+
+This seemed too much to Claude. He felt ashamed to spend such a large
+sum on what must seem an unnecessary caprice to the average person, even
+probably to people who were above the average. If he were known as a
+composer, if he were popular or famous, the matter, he felt, would be
+quite different. Everyone understands the artistic needs of the famous
+man, or pretends to understand them. But Claude and his work were
+entirely unknown to fame. And now, as he hesitated about the payment of
+this hundred pounds, he regretted this, as he had never before regretted
+it.
+
+But Charmian was strong in her insistence upon his having this
+particular studio. She saw he had taken a fancy to it.
+
+"I know you feel there's the right atmosphere here," she said. "I can
+see you do. It would be fatal not to take this studio if you have that
+feeling. Never mind the expense. We shall get it all back in the
+future."
+
+"Back in the future!" he said, as if startled. "How?"
+
+She saw she had been imprudent, had made a sort of slip.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Some day when your father--But don't let's talk of
+that. A hundred a year is not very much. It will only mean not quite so
+many new hats and dresses for me."
+
+Claude flushed, suddenly and violently.
+
+"Charmian! You can't suppose--"
+
+"Surely a wife has the right to do something to help her husband?"
+
+"But I don't need--I mean, I could never consent--"
+
+She made a face at him, drawing down her brows, and turning her eyes to
+the left where the caretaker stood, with a bunch of keys in his large,
+gouty, red hands. Claude said no more. As they went out Charmian smiled
+at the caretaker.
+
+"We are going to take it. My husband likes it."
+
+"Yes, ma'am. It's a mighty fine studio. The Baron was sorry to leave it,
+but he had to go back to Vi-henner."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Now the next thing is to furnish it," said Charmian, as they walked
+away.
+
+"I shall only want my piano, a chair, and a table," said Claude.
+
+It was only by making a very great effort that he was able to speak
+naturally, with any simplicity.
+
+"Besides," he added quickly, "it's really too expensive. A hundred a
+year is absurd."
+
+"If it were two hundred a year it wouldn't be a penny too much if you
+really like it, if you will feel happy and at home in it. I'm going to
+furnish it for you, quite simply, of course. Just rugs and a divan or
+two, and a screen to shut out the door, two or three pretty comfortable
+chairs, some draperies--only thin ones, nothing heavy to spoil the
+acoustics--a few cushions, a table or two. Oh, and you must have a
+spirit-lamp, a little _batterie de cuisine_, and perhaps a tea-basket."
+
+"But, my dear Charmian--"
+
+"Hush, old boy! You have genius, but you don't understand these things.
+These are the woman's things. I shall love getting together everything.
+Surely you don't want to spoil my little fun. I've made a failure of
+your workroom in Kensington. Do let me try to make a success of the
+studio."
+
+What could Claude do but thank her, but let her have her way?
+
+The studio was taken for three years and furnished. For days Charmian
+talked and thought of little else. She was prompted, carried on, by two
+desires--one, that Claude should be able to work hard as soon as
+possible; the other, that people should realize what an energetic,
+capable, and enthusiastic woman she was. The Madame Sennier spirit
+attended her in her goings out and her comings in, armed her with
+energy, with gaiety, with patience.
+
+When at length all was ready, she said:
+
+"Claude, to-morrow I want you to do something for me."
+
+"What is it? Of course I will do it. You've been so good, giving up
+everything for the studio."
+
+Charmian had really given up several parties, and explained why she
+could not go to them to inquiring hostesses of the "set."
+
+"I want you to let us _pendre la cremaillere_ to-morrow evening all
+alone, just you and I together."
+
+"In the studio?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Well, but"--he smiled, then laughed rather awkwardly--"but what could
+we do there all alone? What is there to do? And, besides, there's that
+party at Mrs. Shiffney's to-morrow night. We were both going to that."
+
+"We could go there afterward if we felt inclined. But--I don't know that
+I want to go to Adelaide Shiffney just now."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Perhaps--only perhaps, remember--I'll tell you to-morrow night in the
+studio."
+
+She assumed in the last words that the matter was settled, and Claude
+raised no further objection. He saw she was set upon the carrying out of
+her plan. There was will in her long eyes. He could not help fancying
+that either she had some surprise in store for him, or that she meant to
+do, or say, something extremely definite, which she had already decided
+upon in her mind, to-morrow in the studio.
+
+He felt slightly uneasy.
+
+On the following morning Charmian looked distinctly mysterious, and
+rather as if she wished Claude to notice her mystery. He ignored it,
+however, though he realized that some plan must be maturing in her head.
+His suspicion of the day before was certainly well founded.
+
+"What about this evening, Charmian?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, we are going to _pendre la cremaillere_. You remember we decided
+yesterday."
+
+"Before or after dinner? And what about Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+"Well, I thought we might go to the studio about half-past seven or
+eight. Could you meet me there--say at half-past seven?"
+
+"Meet you?"
+
+"Yes; I've got to go out in that direction and could take it on the way
+home."
+
+"All right. But dinner? That's just at dinner-time--not that I care."
+
+"We could have something when we get home. I can tell Alice to put
+something in the dining-room for us. There's that pie, and we can have a
+bottle of champagne to drink success to the studio, if we want it."
+
+"And Mrs. Shiffney's given up?"
+
+"We can see how we feel. She only asked us for eleven. We can easily
+dress and go, it we want to."
+
+So it was settled.
+
+As Claude had not yet begun to work he took a long and solitary walk in
+the afternoon. He made his way to Battersea Park, and spent nearly two
+hours there. That day he felt as if a crisis, perhaps small but very
+definite, had arisen in his life. For some five months now he had been
+inactive. He had lost the long habit of work. He had allowed his life to
+be disorganized. No longer had he a grip on himself and on life. From
+to-morrow he must get that grip again. In the isolation of the studio he
+would surely be able to get it. Yet he felt very doubtful. He did not
+know what he wanted to do. He seemed to have drifted very far away from
+the days when his talent, or his genius, spoke with no uncertain voice,
+dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt.
+He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The
+Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to
+music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days
+stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what
+was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently
+passed not a few with the _French Revolution_. But the evenings of
+course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian.
+He was beginning to know something of the society in which she had
+always lived. There were many pleasant, some charming, people in it. He
+found a certain enjoyment in the little dinners, the theater parties,
+even in the few receptions he had been to. But he was obliged to
+acknowledge to himself that, when in this society, he disliked the fact
+that he was an unknown man. This society did not give him the incentive
+to do anything great. On the other hand it made him dislike being--or
+was it only seeming?--small. Charmian's attitude, too, had often
+rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He
+had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely
+repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But
+he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her
+position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he
+were closely connected with it, though he had not quite understood how.
+
+All this now rose up, seemed to spread out before his mind as he walked
+in Battersea Park. And he said to himself, "It can't go on. I simply
+must get to work on something. I must get a grip on myself and my life
+again." He remembered the heat of his soul after he had heard Jacques
+Sennier's opera, the passion almost to do something great that had
+glowed in him, the longing for fame. Then he had said to himself: "My
+life shall feed my art. I'll live, and by living I'll achieve." Out of
+that heat no rare flower had arisen. He had come out into the world. He
+had married Charmian, had travelled in Italy. And that was all.
+
+That day he was angry with himself, was sick of his idle life. But he
+did not feel within him the strong certainty that he would be able to
+take his life in hand and transform it, which drives doubt and sorrow
+out of a man. He kept on saying, "I must!" But he did not say, "I
+shall!"
+
+The fact was that the mainspring was missing from the watch. Claude was
+living as if he loved, but he was not loving.
+
+At half-past seven he passed up the handsome steps and under the arch
+which led to his studio.
+
+The caretaker with gouty hands met him. This man had been a soldier, and
+still had a soldier's eyes, and a way of presenting himself, rather
+sternly and watchfully, to those arriving in "my building," as he called
+the house full of studios, which was military. But gout, and it is to be
+feared drink, had long ago made him physically flaccid, and mentally
+rather sulky and vague. He looked a wreck, and as if he guessed that he
+was a wreck. An artist on the first floor had labelled him, "The
+derelict looking for tips to the offing."
+
+"The lady's here, sir," he observed, on seeing Claude.
+
+"Is she?"
+
+"Been 'ere"--he sometimes dropped an aitch and sometimes did not--"this
+half hour."
+
+The fact apparently surprised him, almost indeed upset him.
+
+"This 'alf hour," he repeated, this time dropping the aitch to make a
+change.
+
+"Oh," said Claude, disdaining the explanation which seemed to be
+expected.
+
+He walked on, leaving the guardian to his gout.
+
+The studio was lit up, and directly Claude opened the door he smelt
+coffee and something else--sausages, he fancied. At once he guessed why
+Charmian had arranged to meet him at the studio, instead of going there
+with him. He shut the door slowly. Yes, certainly, sausages.
+
+"Charmian!" he called.
+
+She came out from behind the screen, dressed in a very plain,
+workmanlike black gown, over which she was wearing a large butcher blue
+apron. Her sleeves were turned up and her face was flushed. Claude
+thought she looked younger than she usually did.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"Cooking the dinner," she replied, in a practical voice. "It will be
+ready in a minute. Take off your coat and sit down."
+
+She turned round and disappeared. Something behind the screen was
+hissing like a snake.
+
+Claude now saw a table laid in the middle of the studio. On a rough
+white cloth were plates, knives, and forks, large coffee cups with
+flowers coarsely painted on a gray ground with a faint tinge of blue in
+it, rolls of bread, butter, a cake richly brown in color. A vase of
+coarse, but effective pottery, full of scented wild geranium, stood in
+the midst. Claude took off hat and coat, hung them up on a hook, and
+glanced around.
+
+Certainly Charmian had arranged the furniture well, chosen it well, too.
+The place looked cosy, and everything was in excellent taste. There was
+comfort without luxury. Claude felt that he ought to be very grateful.
+
+"Coming!"
+
+Her voice cried out from behind the screen, and she appeared bearing a
+large dish full of smoking sausages, which she set down on the table.
+
+"Now for the eggs and the coffee!" she said.
+
+Another moment and they were on the table, too, with a plateful of
+buttered toast.
+
+"Studio fare!" she said, taking off the blue apron, pulling down her
+sleeves, and looking at Claude. "Are you surprised?"
+
+"I was for the first moment."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, I had felt sure you were up to something, that you had some
+scheme in your head, some plan for to-day. But I didn't connect it with
+sausages."
+
+Her expression changed slightly.
+
+"Perhaps it isn't only sausages. But it begins with them. Are you
+hungry?"
+
+"Yes, very. I've been walking in Battersea Park."
+
+"Claudie, how awful!"
+
+They sat down and fell to--Charmian's expression. She was playing at the
+Vie de Boheme, but she thought she was being rather serious, that she
+was helping to launch Claude in a new and suitable life. And behind the
+light absurdity of this quite unnecessary meal there was intention,
+grave and intense. The wasted two months must be made up for, the hours
+given to the _French Revolution_ be redeemed. This meal was only the
+prelude to something else.
+
+"Is it good?" she asked, as Claude ate and drank.
+
+"Excellent! Where have you been to-day?"
+
+"I've seen Madre and Susan Fleet."
+
+"Miss Fleet at last."
+
+"Yes. It is so tiresome her moving about so much. I care for her more
+than for any woman in London. All this time she's been in Paris doing
+things for Adelaide Shiffney."
+
+"Did Madre know about to-night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why didn't you tell her? Why not have asked her to come? We belong to
+her and she to us. It would have been natural."
+
+"I love Madre. But I didn't want even her to-night."
+
+Claude realized that he was assisting at a prelude. But he only said:
+
+"I suppose she is going to Mrs. Shiffney's to-night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+When they had finished Charmian said:
+
+"Now I'll clear away."
+
+"I'll help you."
+
+"No, you mustn't. I want you to sit down in that cosy chair there, and
+light your cigar--oh, or your pipe! Yes, to-night you must smoke a
+pipe."
+
+"I haven't brought it."
+
+"Well, then, a cigar. I won't be long."
+
+She began clearing the table. Claude obediently drew out his cigar-case.
+He still felt uneasy. What was coming? He could not tell. But he felt
+almost sure that something was coming which would distress his secret
+sensitiveness, his strong reserve.
+
+He lit a cigar, and sat down in the armchair Charmian had indicated. She
+flitted in and out, removing things from the table, shook out and folded
+the rough white cloth, laid it away somewhere behind the screen, and at
+last came to sit down.
+
+The studio was lit up with electric light.
+
+"There's too much light," she said. "Don't move. I'll do it."
+
+She went over to the door, and turned out two burners, leaving only one
+alight.
+
+"Isn't that ever so much better?" she said, coming to sit down near
+Claude.
+
+"Well, perhaps it is."
+
+"Cosier, more intime."
+
+She sat down with a little sigh.
+
+"I'm going to have a cigarette."
+
+She drew out a thin silver case, opened it.
+
+"A teeny Russian one."
+
+Claude struck a match. She put the cigarette between her lips, and
+leaned forward to the tiny flame.
+
+"That's it."
+
+She sighed.
+
+After a moment of silence she said:
+
+"I'm glad you couldn't work in the little room. If you had been able to
+we should never have had this."
+
+"We!" thought Claude.
+
+"And," she continued, "I feel this is the beginning of great things for
+you. I feel as if, without meaning to, I'd taken you away from your
+path, as if now I understood better. But I don't think it was quite my
+fault if I didn't understand. Claudie, do you know you're terribly
+reserved?"
+
+"Am I?" he said.
+
+He shifted in his chair, took the cigar out of his mouth, and put it
+back again.
+
+"Well, aren't you? Two whole months, and you never told me you couldn't
+work."
+
+"I hated to, after you'd taken so much trouble with that room."
+
+"I know. But, still, directly you did tell me, I perfectly understood.
+I"--she spoke with distinct pressure--"I am a wife who can understand.
+Don't you remember that night at Jacques Sennier's opera?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Didn't I understand then? At the end when they were all applauding?
+I've got your letter, the letter you wrote that night. I shall always
+keep it. Such a burning letter, saying I had inspired you, that my love
+and belief had made you feel as if you could do something great if you
+changed your life, if you lived with me. You remember?"
+
+"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."
+
+Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get
+back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that
+letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter
+back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that
+Charmian had turned out those two burners.
+
+"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from
+that night."
+
+Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of
+love? Was she going to tax him with it?
+
+"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was
+a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that
+high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."
+
+"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a
+genius."
+
+At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man,
+which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of
+melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words
+intensified it.
+
+"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he
+said, with a bluntness not usual in him.
+
+"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget
+things Max Elliot has said about you--long ago. And Madre thinks--I know
+that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some
+of your things."
+
+"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.
+
+He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She
+had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But
+this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian
+had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.
+
+"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."
+
+Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian
+about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he
+felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.
+
+Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had
+been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and
+permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness
+which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night,
+however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to
+bring up battalions of will.
+
+"Well?" Claude said.
+
+"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But
+I don't think they are for everybody."
+
+"For everybody! How do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me
+for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public
+which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of
+Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier--our own Elgar, too! What I mean is
+that perhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few.
+There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost
+frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you."
+
+She was thinking of the Burningtons, the Drakes, of other
+Sennier-worshippers.
+
+"I believe it is partly because of the words you set," she added. "Great
+words, of course. But where can they be sung? Not everywhere. And people
+are so strange about the Bible."
+
+"Strange about the Bible!"
+
+"English people, and even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of
+queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio."
+
+She paused. Claude said nothing. He was feeling hot all over.
+
+"I can't help wishing, for your own sake, that you wouldn't always go to
+the Bible for your inspiration."
+
+"I daresay it is very absurd of me."
+
+"Claudie, you could never be absurd."
+
+"Anybody can be absurd."
+
+"I could never think you absurd. But I suppose everyone can make a
+mistake. It seems to me as if there are a lot of channels, some short,
+ending abruptly, some long, going almost to the center of things. And
+genius is like a liquid poured into them. I only want you to pour yours
+into a long channel. Is it very stupid, or perverse, of me?"
+
+As she said the last words she felt deeply conscious of her feminine
+intelligence, of that delicate ingenuity peculiar to women, unattainable
+by man.
+
+"No, Charmian, of course not. So you think I've been pouring into a very
+short channel?"
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid I've never thought about it."
+
+"I know. It wants another to do that, I think."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"You care for strange things. One can see that by your choice of words.
+But there are strange and wonderful words not in the Bible. The other
+day I was looking into Rossetti's poems. I read _Staff and Scrip_ again
+and _Sister Helen_. There are marvellous passages in both of those. I
+wish sometimes you'd let me come in here, when you're done working, and
+make tea for you, and just read aloud to you anything interesting I come
+across."
+
+That was the beginning of a new connection between husband and wife, the
+beginning also of a new epoch in Claude's life as a composer.
+
+When they left the studio that night he had agreed to Charmian's
+proposal that she should spend some of her spare time in looking out
+words that might be suitable for a musical setting, "in your peculiar
+vein," as she said. By doing this he had abandoned his complete liberty
+as a creator. So at least he felt. Yet he also felt unable to refuse his
+wife's request. To do so, after all her beneficent energies employed on
+his behalf, would be churlish. He might have tried to explain that the
+something within him which was really valuable could not brook bridle or
+spur, that unless it were left to range where it would in untrammelled
+liberty, it was worth very little to the world. He knew this. But a man
+may deny his knowledge even to himself, deny it persistently through
+long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which
+instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or
+strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's
+definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to
+become more definite.
+
+They were in Kensington by ten o'clock that night. Charmian was in high
+spirits. A strong hope was dawning in her. Already she felt almost like
+a collaborator with Claude.
+
+"Don't let us go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Let us dress and go to
+Adelaide Shiffney's."
+
+"Very well," replied Claude. "By the way, what were you going to tell me
+about her?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" she said.
+
+And they went up to dress.
+
+There was a crowd in Grosvenor Square. A good many people were still
+abroad, but there were enough in London to fill Mrs. Shiffney's
+drawing-rooms. And notorieties, beauties, and those mysterious nobodies
+who "go everywhere" until they almost succeed in becoming somebodies,
+were to be seen on every side. Charmian perceived at once that this was
+one of Adelaide's non-exclusive parties. Mrs. Shiffney seldom
+entertained on a very large scale.
+
+"One bore, or one frump, can ruin a party," was a favorite saying of
+hers. But even she, now and then, condescended to "clear people off."
+Charmian realized that Adelaide was making a clearance to-night.
+
+Since her marriage with Claude she had not been invited to No. 14
+B--Mrs. Shiffney's number in the Square--before.
+
+As she came in to the first drawing-room and looked quickly round she
+thought:
+
+"She is clearing off me and Claude."
+
+And for a moment she wished they had not come. Her old horror of being
+numbered with the great crowd of the undistinguished came upon her once
+more. Then she thought of the conversation in the studio, and she
+hardened herself in resolve.
+
+"He shall be famous. I will make him famous, whether he wishes it, cares
+for it, or not."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was not standing close to the first door to "receive"
+solemnly. She could not "be bothered" to do that. The Heaths presently
+came upon her, looking very large and Roman, in the middle of the second
+drawing-room.
+
+In the room just beyond a small orchestra was playing. This was a sure
+sign of a "clearance" party. Mrs. Shiffney never had an orchestra
+playing alone, and steadily, through an evening unless bores and frumps
+were present. "Hungarians in distress" she called these uniformed
+musicians, "trying to help bores in distress and failing inevitably."
+
+She held out her hand to Charmian with a faintly ironic smile.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you. Ah, Mr. Heath--Benedick as the married man. I
+expect you are doing something wonderful as one hears nothing about you.
+The deep silence fills me with expectation."
+
+She smiled again, and turned to speak to an old lady with fuzzy white
+hair.
+
+"One of the fuzzywuzzies who go to private views, and who insist on
+knowing me once a year for my sins."
+
+Charmian's lips tightened as she walked slowly on.
+
+She met many people whom she knew, too many; and that evening she felt
+peculiarly aware of the insignificance of Claude and herself, combined
+as a "married couple," in the eyes of this society. What were they? Just
+two people with fifteen hundred a year and a little house near
+Kensington High Street. As an unmarried girl in Berkeley Square, with a
+popular mother, possibilities had floated about her. Clever, rising men
+came to that house. She had charm. She was "in" everything. Now she felt
+that a sort of fiat had been pronounced, perhaps by Adelaide Shiffney,
+and her following, "Charmian's dropping out."
+
+No doubt she exaggerated. She was half conscious that she was
+exaggerating. But there was surely a change in the attitude people
+adopted toward her. She attributed it to Mrs. Shiffney. "Adelaide hates
+Claude," she said to herself, adding a moment later the woman's reason,
+"because she was in love with him before he married me, and he wouldn't
+look at her." Such a hatred of Adelaide's would almost have pleased her,
+had not Adelaide unfortunately been so very influential.
+
+Claude caught sight of Mrs. Mansfield and went to join her, while
+Charmian spoke to Lady Mildred Burnington, and then to Max Elliot.
+
+Lady Mildred, whose eyes looked more feverish even than usual, and whose
+face was ravaged, as if by some passion or sorrow for ever burning
+within her, had a perfunctory manner which fought with her expression.
+Her face was too much alive. Her manner was half dead. Only when she
+played the violin was the whole woman in accord, harmonious. Then truth,
+vigor, intention emerged from her, and she conquered. To-night she spoke
+of the prospects for the opera season, looking about her as if seeking
+fresh causes for dissatisfaction.
+
+"It's going to be dull," she said. "Covent Garden has things all its own
+way, and therefore it goes to sleep. But in June we shall have Sennier.
+That is something. Without him it would really not be worth while to
+take a box. I told Mr. Brett so."
+
+"What did he say?" asked Charmian.
+
+"One Sennier makes a summer."
+
+It was at this moment that Max Elliot came up, looking as he nearly
+always did, cheerful and ready to be kind.
+
+"I know," he said to Lady Mildred, "you're complaining about the opera.
+I've just been with the Admiral."
+
+"Hilary knows less about music than even the average Englishman."
+
+"Well, he's been swearing, and even--saving your presence--cursing by
+Strauss."
+
+"He thinks that places him with the connoisseurs. It's his ambition to
+prove to the world that one may be an Admiral and yet be quite
+intelligent, even have what is called taste. He declines to be a
+sea-dog."
+
+"I think it's only living up to you. But have you really no hope of the
+opera?"
+
+"Very little--unless Sennier saves the situation."
+
+"Has he anything new?" asked Charmian.
+
+Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
+
+"Madame Sennier says he hasn't."
+
+"We ought to have a rival enterprise here as they have in New York at
+present," said Lady Mildred.
+
+"Sennier's success at the Metropolitan has nearly killed the New Era,"
+said Elliot. "But Crayford has any amount of pluck, and a purse that
+seems inexhaustible. I suppose you know he's to be here to-night."
+
+"Mr. Jacob Crayford, the Impresario!" exclaimed Charmian. "He's in
+England?"
+
+"Arrived to-day by the _Lusitania_ in search of talent, of someone who
+can 'produce the goods' as he calls it. Adelaide sent a note to meet him
+at the Savoy, and he's coming. Shows his pluck, doesn't it? This is the
+enemy's camp."
+
+Max Elliot laughed gaily. He loved the strong battles of art, backed by
+"commercial enterprise," and was friends with everyone though he could
+be such a keen and concentrated partisan.
+
+"Crayford would give a hundred thousand dollars without a murmur to get
+Jacques away from the Metropolitan," he continued.
+
+"Won't he go for that?" asked Lady Mildred, in her hollow voice. "Is
+Madame Sennier holding out for two hundred thousand?"
+
+Again Max Elliot looked happily evasive.
+
+"Henriette! Has she anything to do with it?"
+
+"Mr. Elliot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."
+
+"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"
+
+"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.
+
+"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.
+Margot Drake is speaking to him."
+
+"Margot--of course! But I can't see them."
+
+Max Elliot moved.
+
+"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"
+
+Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.
+
+"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."
+
+"To be sure!"
+
+"What--that little man!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."
+
+"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford
+is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous
+men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his
+way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last
+fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him
+point and even charm as a man."
+
+"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you
+know him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do introduce me to him."
+
+She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face,
+and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney
+kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed
+her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul
+Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were
+converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite
+understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which
+marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she
+repeated quietly, but with determination:
+
+"Please introduce me to him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm,
+to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who
+will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not
+been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew
+that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes
+in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But
+she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of
+his personality.
+
+Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown
+eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head
+which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined
+features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was
+intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be
+unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a
+carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a
+faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to
+grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather
+surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.
+His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve
+links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first
+introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his
+eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong
+imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His
+eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little
+brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance
+which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It
+showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to
+be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.
+
+"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I
+wanted to know the great fighter."
+
+She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some
+people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave
+her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it
+suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do
+with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.
+
+Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows
+sometimes suddenly upward.
+
+"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he
+said, speaking rapidly.
+
+"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."
+
+"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."
+
+"I hope it isn't true."
+
+"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.
+Crayford.
+
+"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his
+_Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life."
+
+"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another
+Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."
+
+"I do hope you'll be successful."
+
+"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man
+can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you
+interested in music?"
+
+"Intensely."
+
+She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating
+whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain.
+Something told her to refrain, and she added:
+
+"I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of
+everything."
+
+"Well, opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big proposition.
+And it's going to be a bigger proposition than most people dream of."
+
+His eyes flashed.
+
+"Wait till I build an opera house in London, something better than that
+old barn of yours over against the Police Station."
+
+"Are you going to build an opera house here?"
+
+"Why not? But I've got to find some composers. They're somewhere about.
+Bound to be. The thing is to find them. It was a mere chance Sennier
+coming up. If he hadn't married his wife he'd be starving at this
+minute, and I'd be licking the Metropolitan into a cocked hat."
+
+Charmian longed to put her hand on the little man's arm and to say:
+
+"I've married a musician, I've married a genius. Take him up. Give him
+his chance."
+
+But she looked at those big brown eyes which confronted her under the
+twitching eyebrows. And now that the flash was gone she saw in them the
+soul of the business man. Claude was not a "business proposition." It
+was useless to speak of him yet.
+
+"I hope you'll find your composer," she said quietly, almost with a
+dainty indifference.
+
+Then someone came up and claimed Crayford with determination.
+
+"That's a pretty girl," he remarked. "Is she married? I didn't catch her
+name."
+
+"Oh, yes, she's married to an unknown man who composes."
+
+"The devil she is!"
+
+The lips above the tiny beard stretched in a smile that was rather
+sardonic.
+
+Before going away Charmian wanted to have a little talk with Susan
+Fleet, who was helping Mrs. Shiffney with the "fuzzywuzzies." She found
+her at length standing before a buffet, and entertaining a very thin and
+angular woman, dressed in black, with scarlet flowers growing out of her
+toilet in various unexpected places. Miss Fleet welcomed Charmian with
+her usual unimpassioned directness, and introduced her quietly to Miss
+Gretch, as her companion was called, surprisingly.
+
+Miss Gretch, who was drinking claret cup, and eating little rolls which
+contained hidden treasure of pate de foie gras, bowed and smiled with
+anxious intensity, then abruptly became unnaturally grave, and gazed
+with a sort of piercing attention at Charmian's hair, jewels, gown, fan,
+and shoes.
+
+"She seems to be memorizing me," thought Charmian, wondering who Miss
+Gretch was, and how she came to be there.
+
+"Stay here just a minute, will you?" said Susan Fleet. "Adelaide wants
+me, I see. I'll be back directly."
+
+"Please be sure to come. I want to talk to you," said Charmian.
+
+As Susan Fleet was going she murmured:
+
+"Miss Gretch writes for papers."
+
+Charmian turned to the angular guest with a certain alacrity. They
+talked together with animation till Susan Fleet came back.
+
+A week later, on coming down to breakfast before starting for the
+studio, Claude found among his letters a thin missive, open at the ends,
+and surrounded with yellow paper. He tore the paper, and three newspaper
+cuttings dropped on to his plate.
+
+"What's this?" he said to Charmian, who was sitting opposite to him.
+"Romeike and Curtice! Why should they send me anything?"
+
+He picked up one of the cuttings.
+
+"It's from a paper called _My Lady_."
+
+"What is it about?"
+
+"It seems to be an account of Mrs. Shiffney's party, with something
+marked in blue pencil, 'Mrs. Claude Heath came in late with her
+brilliant husband, whose remarkable musical compositions have not yet
+attained to the celebrity which will undoubtedly be theirs within no
+long time. The few who have heard Mr. Heath's music place him with
+Elgar, Max Reger, and Delius.' Then a description of what you were
+wearing. How very ridiculous and objectionable!"
+
+Claude looked furious and almost ashamed.
+
+"Here's something else! 'A Composer's Studio,' from _The World and His
+Wife_. It really is insufferable."
+
+"Why? What can it say?"
+
+"'Mr. Claude Heath, the rising young composer, who recently married the
+beautiful Miss Charmian Mansfield, of Berkeley Square, has just rented
+and furnished elaborately a magnificent studio in Renwick Place,
+Chelsea. Exquisite Persian rugs strew the floor----'"
+
+Claude stopped, and with an abrupt movement tore the cuttings to pieces
+and threw them on the carpet.
+
+"What can it mean? Who on earth----? Charmian, do you know anything of
+this?"
+
+"Oh," she said, with a sort of earnest disgust, mingled with surprise,
+"it must be that dreadful Miss Gretch!"
+
+"Dreadful Miss Gretch! I never heard of her. Who is she?"
+
+"At Adelaide Shiffney's the other night Susan Fleet introduced me to a
+Miss Gretch. I believe she sometimes writes, for papers or something. I
+had a little talk with her while I was waiting for Susan to come back."
+
+"Did you tell her about the studio?"
+
+"Let me see! Did I? Yes, I believe I did say something. You see, Claude,
+it was the night of----"
+
+"I know it was. But how could you----?"
+
+"How could I suppose things said in a private conversation would ever
+appear in print? I only said that you had a studio because you composed
+and wanted quiet, and that I had been picking up a few old things to
+make it look homey. How extraordinary of Miss Gretch!"
+
+"It has made me look very ridiculous. I am quite unknown, and therefore
+it is impossible for the public to be interested in me. Miss Gretch is
+certainly a very inefficient journalist. Elgar! Delius too! I wonder she
+didn't compare me with Scriabine while she was about it. How hateful it
+is being made a laughing-stock like this."
+
+"Oh, nobody reads those papers, I expect. Still, Miss Gretch----"
+
+"Gretch! What a name!" said Claude.
+
+His anger vanished in an abrupt fit of laughter, but he started for the
+studio in half an hour looking decidedly grim. When he had gone Charmian
+picked up the torn cuttings which were lying on the carpet. She had been
+very slow in finishing breakfast that day.
+
+Since her meeting with Jacob Crayford her mind had run perpetually on
+opera. She could not forget his words, spoken with the authority of the
+man who knew, "Opera's the only thing nowadays, the only really big
+proposition." She could not forget that he had left England to "put
+Europe through his sieve" for a composer who could stand up against
+Jacques Sennier. What a chance there was now for a new man. He was being
+actively searched for. If only Claude had written an opera! If only he
+would write an opera now!
+
+Charmian never doubted her husband's ability to do something big. Her
+instinct told her that he had greatness of some kind in him. His music
+had deeply impressed her. But she was sure it was not the sort of thing
+to reach a wide public. It seemed to her against the trend of taste of
+the day. There was an almost terrible austerity in it, combined, she
+believed, with great power and originality. She longed to hear some of
+it given in public with the orchestra and voices. She had thought of
+trying to "get hold of" one of the big conductors, Harold Dane, or
+Vernon Randall, of trying to persuade him to give Claude a hearing at
+Queen's Hall. Then a certain keen prudence had held her back. A voice
+had whispered, "Be patient!" She realized the importance of the first
+step taken in public. Jacques Sennier had been utterly unknown in
+England. He appeared as the composer of the _Paradis Terrestre_. If he
+had been known already as the composer of a number of things which had
+left the public indifferent, would he have made the enormous success he
+had made? She remembered Mascagni and his _Cavalleria_, Leoncavallo and
+his _Pagliacci_. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any
+rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful
+for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in
+arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like
+Jacob Crayford kept a sharp look-out for fresh talent. He read all that
+appeared about new composers of course. Or someone read for him. Even
+"that dreadful Miss Gretch's" lucubrations might come under his notice.
+
+For a week now Claude had gone every day after breakfast to the studio.
+Charmian had not yet disturbed him there. She felt that she must handle
+her husband gently. Although he was so kind, so disposed to be
+sympathetic, to meet people half way, she knew well that there was
+something in him to which as yet she had never probed, which she did not
+understand. She was sufficiently intelligent not to deceive herself
+about this, not to think that because Claude was a man of course she, a
+woman, could see all of him clearly. The hidden something in her husband
+might be a thing resistent. She believed she must go to work gently,
+subtly, even though she meant to be very firm. So she had let Claude
+have a week to himself. This gave him time to feel that the studio was a
+sanctum, perhaps also that it was a rather lonely one. Meanwhile, she
+had been searching for "words."
+
+That task was a difficult one, because her mind was obsessed by the
+thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her.
+She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly
+"plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was
+more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words.
+But the music of Claude's which she knew was joined with words. And he
+must do something with words. For that, as it were, would lead the way
+toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set
+some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he
+might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a
+violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued.
+And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically,
+descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for
+opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent for such work, that
+he was not drawn toward the theater. But if she could lead him gradually
+toward things essentially dramatic, she might wake up in him forces the
+tendency of which he had never suspected.
+
+She re-read Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William
+Morris,--Wordsworth no--into Fiona Macleod, William Watson, John
+Davidson, Alfred Noyes. Now and then she was strongly attracted by
+something, she thought, "Will it do?" And always at such moments a
+vision of Jacob Crayford seemed to rise up before her, with large brown
+eyes, ears like a faun, nervous hands, and the tiny beard. "Is it a
+business proposition?" The moving lips said that. And she gazed again at
+the poem which had arrested her attention, she thought, "Is it a
+business proposition?" Keats's terribly famous _Belle Dame Sans Merci_
+really attracted her more than anything else. She knew it had been set
+by Cyril Scott, and other ultra-modern composers, but she felt that
+Claude could do something wonderful with it. Yet perhaps it was too well
+known.
+
+One lyric of William Watson's laid a spell upon her:
+
+  "Pass, thou wild heart,
+  Wild heart of youth that still
+  Hast half a will
+      To stay.
+  I grow too old a comrade, let us part.
+      Pass thou away."
+
+She read that and the preceding verse again and again, in the grip of a
+strange and melancholy fascination, dreaming. She woke, and remembered
+that she was young, that Claude was young. But she had reached out and
+touched old age. She had realized, newly, the shortness of the time. And
+a sort of fever assailed her. Claude must begin, must waste no more
+precious hours; she would take him the poem of William Watson, would
+read it to him. He might make of it a song, and in the making he would
+learn something perhaps--to hasten on the path.
+
+She started for the studio one day, taking the _Belle Dame_, William
+Watson's poems, and two or three books of French poetry, Verlaine,
+Montesquiou, Moreas.
+
+She arrived in Renwick Place just after four o'clock. She meant to make
+tea for Claude and herself, and had brought with her some little cakes
+and a bottle of milk. Quite a load she was carrying. The gouty hands of
+the caretaker went up when he saw her.
+
+"My, ma'am, what a heavy lot for you to be carrying!"
+
+"I'm strong. Mr. Heath's in the studio?"
+
+Before the man could reply she heard the sound of a piano.
+
+"Oh, yes, he is. Is there water there? Yes. That's right. I'm going to
+boil the kettle and make tea."
+
+She went on quickly, opened the door softly, and slipped in.
+
+Claude, who sat with his back to her playing, did not hear her. She
+crept behind the screen into what she called "the kitchen." What fun!
+She could make the tea without his knowing that she was there, and bring
+it in to him when he stopped playing.
+
+As she softly prepared things she listened attentively, with a sort of
+burning attention, to the music. She had not heard it before. She knew
+that when her husband was composing he did not go to the piano. This
+must be something which he had just composed and was trying over. It
+sounded to her mystic, remote, very strange, almost like a soul
+communing with itself; then more violent, more sonorous, but always very
+strange.
+
+The kettle began to boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked
+two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor.
+
+"What's that? Who's there?"
+
+Claude had stopped playing abruptly. His voice was the voice of a man
+startled and angry.
+
+"Who's there?" he repeated loudly.
+
+She heard him get up and come toward the screen.
+
+"Claudie, do forgive me! I slipped in. I thought I would make tea for
+you. It's all ready. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was waiting
+till you had finished. I'm so sorry."
+
+"You, Charmian!"
+
+There was an odd remote expression in his eyes, and his whole face
+looked excited.
+
+"Do--do forgive me, Claudie! Those dreadful spoons!"
+
+She picked them up.
+
+"Of course. What are all these books doing here?"
+
+"I brought them. I thought after tea we might talk over words. You
+remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Well--but I've begun on something."
+
+"Were you playing it just now?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Francis Thompson's _The Hound of Heaven_."
+
+Jacob Crayford--what would he think of that sort of thing?
+
+"You know it, don't you?" Claude said, as she was silent.
+
+"I've read it, but quite a while ago. I don't remember it well. Of
+course I know it's very wonderful. Madre loves it."
+
+"She was speaking of it at the Shiffney's the other night. That's why it
+occurred to me to study it."
+
+"Oh. Well, now you have stopped shall we have tea?"
+
+"Yes. I've done enough for to-day."
+
+After tea Charmian said:
+
+"I'll study _The Hound of Heaven_ again. But now do you mind if I read
+you two or three of the things I have here?"
+
+"No," he said kindly, but not at all eagerly. "Do read anything you
+like."
+
+It was six o'clock when Charmian read Watson's poem "to finish up with."
+Claude who, absorbed secretly by the thought of his new composition, had
+listened so far without any keen interest, at moments had not listened
+at all, though preserving a decent attitude and manner of attention,
+suddenly woke up into genuine enthusiasm.
+
+"Give me that, Charmian!" he exclaimed. "I scarcely ever write a song.
+But I'll set that."
+
+She gave him the book eagerly.
+
+That evening they were at home. After dinner Claude went to his little
+room to write some letters, and Charmian read _The Hound of Heaven_. She
+decided against it. Beautiful though it was, she considered it too
+mystic, too religious. She was sure many people could not understand it.
+
+"I wish Madre hadn't talked to Claude about it," she thought. "He thinks
+so much of her opinion. And she doesn't care in the least whether Claude
+makes a hit with the public or not."
+
+The mere thought of the word "hit" in connection with Mrs. Mansfield
+almost made Charmian smile.
+
+"I suppose there's something dreadfully vulgar about me," she said to
+herself. "But I belong to the young generation. I can't help loving
+success."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield had been the friend, was the friend, of many successful
+men. They came to her for sympathy, advice. She followed their upward
+careers with interest, rejoiced in their triumphs. But she cared for the
+talent in a man rather than for what it brought him. Charmian knew that.
+And long ago Mrs. Mansfield had spoken of the plant that must grow in
+darkness. At this time Charmian began almost to dread her mother's
+influence upon her husband.
+
+She was cheered by a little success.
+
+Claude set Watson's poem rapidly. He played the song to Charmian, and
+she was delighted with it.
+
+"I know people would love that!" she cried.
+
+"If it was properly sung by someone with temperament," he replied. "And
+now I can go on with _The Hound of Heaven_."
+
+Her heart sank.
+
+"I'm only a little afraid they may think you are imitating Elgar," she
+murmured after a moment.
+
+"Imitating Elgar!"
+
+"Not that you are, or ever would do such a thing. It isn't your music,
+it's the subject, that makes me a little afraid. It seems to me to be an
+Elgar subject."
+
+"Really!"
+
+The conversation dropped, and was not resumed. But a fortnight later,
+when Charmian came to make tea in the studio, and asked as to the
+progress of the new work, Claude said rather coldly:
+
+"I'm not going on with it at present."
+
+She saw that he was feeling depressed, and realized why. But she was
+secretly triumphant at the success of her influence, secretly delighted
+with her own cleverness. How deftly, with scarcely more than a word, she
+had turned him from his task. Surely thus had Madame Sennier influenced,
+guided her husband.
+
+"I believe I could do anything with Claude," she said to herself that
+day.
+
+"Play me your Watson song again, Claudie," she said. "I do love it so."
+
+"It's only a trifle."
+
+"I love it!" she repeated.
+
+He sat down at the piano and played it to her once more. When he had
+finished she said:
+
+"I've found someone who could sing that gloriously."
+
+"Who?" he asked.
+
+Playing the song had excited him. He turned eagerly toward her.
+
+"A young American who has been studying in Paris. I met him at the
+Drakes' two or three days ago. Mr. Jacob Crayford, the opera man, thinks
+a great deal of him, I'm told. Let me ask him to come here one day and
+try the _Wild Heart_. May I?"
+
+"Yes, do," said Claude.
+
+"And meanwhile what are you working on instead of _The Hound of
+Heaven_?"
+
+Claude's expression changed. He seemed to stiffen with reserve. But he
+replied, with a kind of elaborate carelessness:
+
+"I think of trying a violin concerto. That would be quite a new
+departure for me. But you know the violin was my second study at the
+Royal College."
+
+"That won't do," thought Charmian.
+
+"If only Kreisler would take it up when it is finished as he took up--"
+she began.
+
+Claude interrupted her.
+
+"It may take me months, so it's no use thinking about who is to play it.
+Probably it will never be played at all."
+
+"Then why compose it?" she nearly said.
+
+But she did not say it. What was the use, when she had resolved that the
+concerto should be abandoned as _The Hound of Heaven_ had been?
+
+She brought the young American, whose name was Alston Lake, to the
+studio. Claude took a fancy to him at once. Lake sang the _Wild Heart_,
+tried it a second time, became enthusiastic about it. His voice was a
+baritone, and exactly suited the song. He begged Claude to let him sing
+the song during the season at the parties for which he was engaged. They
+studied it together seriously. During these rehearsals Charmian sat in
+an armchair a little way from the piano listening, and feeling the
+intensity of an almost feverish anticipation within her.
+
+This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused
+Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she
+listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages
+again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a
+sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She
+ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing
+quite near, almost close to her.
+
+"People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself.
+
+And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely
+it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving
+love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away
+from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long,
+from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself
+perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to
+the light that illumined the goal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square
+was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and
+Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a
+couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended
+to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the
+Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur, and from there to prosecute
+their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle
+down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music,
+containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's
+hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying
+on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than
+England's.
+
+This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.
+
+The young American singer, Alston Lake, had been true to his word.
+During the past London season he had sung Claude's _Wild Heart of Youth_
+everywhere. And people, the right people, had liked it. Swiftly composed
+in an hour of enthusiasm it was really a beautiful and original song. It
+was a small thing, but it was a good thing. And it was presented to the
+public by a new and enthusiastic man who at once made his mark both as a
+singer and as a personality. Although one song cannot make anybody a
+composer of mark in the esteem of a great public, yet Claude's drew some
+attention to him. But it did more than this. It awoke in Claude a sort
+of spurious desire for greater popularity, which was assiduously
+fostered by Charmian. The real man, deep down, had a still and
+inexorable contempt for laurels easily won, for the swift applause of
+drawing-rooms. But the weakness in Claude, a thing of the surface, weed
+floating on a pool that had depths, responded to the applause, to the
+congratulations, with an almost anxious quickness. His mind began to
+concern itself too often with the feeble question, "What do people want
+of me? What do they want me to do?" Often he played the accompaniment to
+his song at parties that season when Alston Lake sang it, and he enjoyed
+too much--that is his surface enjoyed too much--the pleasure it gave,
+the demonstrations it evoked. He received with too much eagerness the
+congratulations of easily touched women.
+
+Mrs. Mansfield noticed all this, and it diminished her natural pleasure
+in her son-in-law's little success. But Charmian was delighted to see
+that Claude was "becoming human at last." The weakness in her husband
+made her trust more fully her own power. She realized that events were
+working with her, were helping her to increase her influence. She
+blossomed with expectation.
+
+Alston Lake had his part in the circumstances which were now about to
+lead the Heaths away from England, were to place them in new
+surroundings, submit them to fresh influences.
+
+His voice had been "discovered" in America by Jacob Crayford, who had
+sent him to Europe to be trained, and intended, if things went well and
+he proved to have the value expected of him, to bring him out at the
+opera house in New York, which was trying to put a fight against the
+Metropolitan.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I've got another Battistini in that boy!"
+Crayford sometimes said to people. "He's got a wonderful voice, but I
+wouldn't have paid for his training if he hadn't something that's
+bullier."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The devil's own ambition."
+
+Crayford had not mistaken his man. He seldom did. Alston Lake had a will
+of iron and was possessed of a passionate determination to succeed. He
+had a driving reason that made him resolve to "win out" as he called it.
+His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly
+vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then
+had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving
+his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for
+business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he
+hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly
+threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or
+nothing. The Wall Street magnate stopped all supplies. Then Crayford
+took Alston up. For three years Alston had lived on the impresario's
+charity in Paris. Was it matter for wonder if he set his teeth and
+resolved to win out? He had in him the grit of young America, that
+intensity of life which sweeps through veins like a tide.
+
+"Father's going to see presently," he often said to himself. "He's just
+got to, and that's all there is to it."
+
+This young man was almost as a weapon in Charmian's hand.
+
+He was charming, and specially charming in his enthusiasm. He had the
+American readiness to meet others half way, the American lack of
+shyness. Despite the iron of his will, the fierceness of his young
+determination, he was often naive almost as a schoolboy. The evil of
+Paris had swirled about him and had left him unstained by its blackness.
+He was no fool. He was certainly not ignorant of life. But he preserved
+intact a delightful freshness that often seemed to partake of innocence.
+
+And he worked, as he expressed it, "like the devil."
+
+Charmian, genuinely liking him, but also seeing his possibilities as a
+lever, or weapon, was delightful to him. Claude also took to him at
+once. The song seemed to link them all together happily. Very soon
+Alston was almost as one of the Heath family. He came perpetually to the
+studio to "try things over." He brought various American friends there.
+He ate improvised meals there at odd times, Charmian acting as cook. He
+had even slept there more than once, when they had been making, music
+very late. And Charmian had had a bed put on the platform behind the
+screen, and called it "the Prophet's chamber."
+
+This young and determined enthusiast had a power of flooding others
+with his atmosphere. He flooded Claude with it. And his ambition made
+his atmosphere what it was. Here was another who meant to "produce the
+goods."
+
+Never before had Claude come closely in contact with the vigor, with the
+sharply cut ideals, of the new world. He began to see many things in a
+new way, to see some things which he had never perceived before. Among
+them he saw the fine side of ambition. He respected Alston's
+determination to win out, to justify his conduct in his father's eyes,
+and pay back to Mr. Crayford with interest all he had received from that
+astute, yet not unimaginative, man. He loved the lad for his eagerness.
+When Alston came to Renwick Place a wind from the true Bohemia seemed to
+blow through the studio, and the day seemed young and golden.
+
+Yet Alston, quite ignorantly, did harm to Claude. For he helped to win
+Claude away from his genuine, his inner self, to draw him into the path
+which he had always instinctively avoided until his marriage with
+Charmian.
+
+Although unspoiled, Alston Lake had not been unaffected by Paris, which
+had done little harm to his morals, but which had decidedly influenced
+his artistic sensibility. The brilliant city had not smirched his soul,
+but it had helped to form his taste. That was very modern, and very
+un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the
+complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the
+obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love
+of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as
+he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an
+egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical
+development was likely to take place in the direction of opera.
+
+"Opera's going to be the big proposition!" was his art cry. There was no
+doubt of Jacob Crayford's influence upon him.
+
+He was the first person who turned Claude's mind seriously toward opera,
+and therefore eventually toward a villa in Algeria.
+
+Having launched the song with success, Alston Lake naturally wished to
+hear more of Claude's music. Claude played to him a great deal of it. He
+was interested in it, admired it. But--and here his wholly unconscious
+egoism came into play--he did not quite "believe in it." And his lack of
+belief probably emanated from the fact that Claude's settings of words
+from the Bible were not well suited to his own temperament, talent, or
+training. Being very frank, and already devoted to Claude, he said
+straight out what he thought. Charmian loved him almost for expressing
+her secret belief. She now said what she thought. Claude, the reserved
+and silent recluse of a few months ago, was induced by these two to come
+out into the open and take part in the wordy battles which rage about
+art. The instant success of his song took away from him an excuse which
+he might otherwise have made, when Charmian and Alston Lake urged him to
+compose with a view to pleasing the public taste; by which they both
+meant the taste of the cultivated public which was now becoming widely
+diffused, and which had acquired power. He could not say that his talent
+was one which had no appeal to the world, that he was incapable of
+pleasing. One song was nothing. So he declared. Charmian and Alston Lake
+in their enthusiasm elevated it into a great indication, lifted it up
+like a lamp till it seemed to shed rays of light on the way in which
+they urged Claude to walk.
+
+He had long abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting
+of the _Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But
+before it was finished--and during the season his time for work was
+limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and
+Alston Lake involved him--an event took place which had led directly to
+the packing of those boxes which now stood ready for a journey. Jacob
+Crayford reappeared in London after putting Europe through his sieve.
+And Claude was introduced to him by Alston Lake, who insisted on his
+patron hearing Claude's song.
+
+Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big
+proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness
+for Lake, and Lake's boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some
+attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time.
+But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently
+this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet.
+But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was
+something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was
+Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her
+"darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her
+husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you
+wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the
+little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he
+hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about
+running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting."
+
+"My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed
+Charmian demurely.
+
+From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on
+an opera.
+
+Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had
+come to London again in June. The _Paradis Terrestre_ had been revived
+at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before.
+
+"Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night
+in his studio.
+
+Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and
+had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on
+their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of
+his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped
+for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking
+lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening.
+
+"I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I have no bent toward the theater."
+
+Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray
+eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and
+rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box,
+and glanced at Charmian.
+
+"What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone
+voice.
+
+Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs.
+Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes.
+
+"Well--" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know--now."
+
+"Now, old chap?"
+
+"I mean I hardly know."
+
+"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston
+triumphantly.
+
+Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark
+hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more
+definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She
+glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening
+she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost
+miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly
+dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said
+nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
+
+"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and
+up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
+
+"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting
+managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that
+fires him."
+
+"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
+
+Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music
+and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly
+always in agreement.
+
+"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the
+big lad--he looked little more than a lad--good-naturedly.
+
+"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was
+Crayford."
+
+He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.
+
+"Crayford's a marvellous man. He'll lick the Metropolitan crowd yet.
+He's going to make me."
+
+"You mean you're going to make yourself?" interrupted Claude.
+
+"Takes two to do it!"
+
+Again he looked over to Charmian.
+
+"Without Crayford I should never have believed I could be a big opera
+singer. As it is, I mean to be. And, what is more, I know I shall be.
+Now, Claude, old fellow, don't get on your hind legs, but just listen to
+me. Every man needs help when he's a kid, needs somebody who
+knows--_knows_, mind you--to put him in the right way. What is wanted
+nowadays is operatic stuff, first-rate operatic stuff. Now, look here,
+I'm going to speak out straight, and that's all there is to it. I wanted
+Crayford to hear your big things"--Claude shifted in his chair,
+stretched out his legs and drew them up--"I told him about them and how
+strong they were. 'What subjects does he treat?' he said. I told him. At
+least, I began to tell him. 'Oh, Lord!' he said, stopping me on the
+nail--but you know how busy he is. He can't waste time. And he's out for
+the goods, you know--'Oh, Lord!' he said. 'Don't bother me with the
+Bible. The time for oratorio has gone to join Holy Moses!' I tried to
+explain that your stuff was no more like old-fashioned oratorio than
+Chicago is like Stratford-on-Avon, but he wouldn't listen. All he said
+was, 'Gone to join Holy Moses, my boy! Tell that chap Heath to bring me
+a good opera and I'll make him more famous than Sennier. For I know how
+to run him, or any man that can produce the goods, twice as well as
+Sennier's run.' There, old chap! I've given it you straight. Look what a
+success we've had with the song!"
+
+"And _I_ found him that!" Charmian could not help saying quickly.
+
+"Find him a first-rate libretto, Mrs. Charmian! I'll tell you what, I
+know a lot of fellows in Paris who write. Suppose you and I run over to
+Paris--"
+
+"Would you let me, Claudie?" she interrupted.
+
+"Oh!" he said, laughing, but without much mirth. "Do whatever you like,
+my children. You make me feel as if I know nothing about myself, nothing
+at all."
+
+"Weren't you one of the best orchestral pupils at the Royal College?"
+said Alston. "Didn't you win----?"
+
+"Go--go to Paris and bring me back a libretto!" he exclaimed, assuming a
+mock despair.
+
+He did not reckon with Charmian's determination. He had taken it all as
+a kind of joke. But when, at the end of the season, he suggested a visit
+to Cornwall to see his people, Charmian said:
+
+"You go! And I'll take Susan Fleet as a chaperon and run over to Paris
+with Alston Lake."
+
+"What--to find the libretto? But there's no one in Paris in August."
+
+"Leave that to us," she answered with decision.
+
+Claude still felt as if the whole thing were a sort of joke. But he let
+his wife go. And she came back with a very clever and powerful libretto,
+written by a young Algerian who knew Arab life well, and who had served
+for a time with the Foreign Legion. Claude read it carefully, then
+studied it minutely. The story interested him. The plot was strong.
+There were wonderful opportunities for striking scenic effects. But the
+whole thing was entirely "out of his line." And he told Charmian and
+Lake so.
+
+"It would need to be as Oriental in the score as _Louise_ is French," he
+said. "And what do I know----"
+
+"Go and get it!" interrupted Lake. "Nothing ties you to London. Spend a
+couple of years over it, if you like. It would be worth it. And Crayford
+says there's going to be a regular 'boom' in Eastern things in a year or
+two."
+
+"Now how can he possibly know that?" said Claude.
+
+"My boy, he does know it. Crayford knows everything. He looks ahead, by
+Jove! Fools don't know what the people want. Clever men do know what
+they want. And Crayfords know what they're going to want."
+
+And now the Heath's boxes were actually packed, and the great case of
+scores stood in the hall in Berkeley Square.
+
+As Claude looked at it he felt like one who had burnt his boats.
+
+Ever since he had decided that he would "have a try at opera," as Alston
+Lake expressed it, he had been studying orchestration assiduously in
+London with a brilliant master. For nearly three months he had given all
+his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already
+been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the
+most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless
+energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him
+was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room,
+with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had
+been sent on by the strange force which lives and perpetually renews
+itself in a man's own genius, when he is at the work he was sent into
+the world to do. Now he had scourged himself on by a self-consciously
+exercised force of will. He had set his teeth. He had called upon all
+the dogged pertinacity which a man must have if he is to be really a man
+among men. Always, far before him in the distance which must some day be
+gained, gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp lamp of success. He had an object
+now, which must never be forgotten, success. What had been his object
+when he toiled in Mullion House? He had scarcely known that he had any
+object in working--in giving up. But, if he had, it was surely the thing
+itself. He had desired to create a certain thing. Once the thing was
+created he had passed on to something else.
+
+Sometimes now he looked back on that life of his, and it seemed very
+strange, very far away. A sort of halo of faint and caressing light
+surrounded it; but it seemed a thing rather vague, almost a thing of
+dreams. The life he was entering now was not vague, nor dreamlike, but
+solid, firmly planted, rooted in intention. He read the label attached
+to the case of scores: "Claude Heath, passenger to Algiers, via
+Marseilles." And he could scarcely believe he was really going.
+
+As he looked up from the label he saw the post lying on the hall-table.
+Two letters for him, and--ah, some more cuttings from Romeike and
+Curtice. He was quite accustomed to getting those now. "That dreadful
+Miss Gretch" had infected others with her disease of comment, and his
+name was fairly often in the papers.
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Claude Heath are about to leave their charming and
+artistic house in Kensington and to take up their residence near
+Algiers. It is rumored that there is an interesting reason, not wholly
+unconnected with things operatic, for their departure, etc."
+
+Charmian had been at work even in these last busy days. Her energy was
+wonderful. Claude considered it for a moment as he stood in the hall.
+Energy and will, she had both, and she had made him feel them. She had
+become quite a personage. She was certainly a very devoted wife, devoted
+to what she called, and what no doubt everyone else would call, his
+"interests." And yet--and yet--
+
+Claude knew that he did not love her. He admired her. He had become
+accustomed to her. He felt her force. He knew he ought to be very
+grateful to her for many things. She was devoted to him. Or was she--was
+she not rather devoted to his "interests," to those nebulous attendants
+that hover round a man like shadows in the night? How would it be in
+Algiers when they were quite alone together?
+
+He sighed, looked once more at the label, and went upstairs.
+
+He found Mrs. Mansfield there alone, reading beside the fire.
+
+She had not been very well, and her face looked thinner than usual, her
+eyes more intense and burning. She was dressed in white.
+
+As Claude came in she laid down her book and turned to him. He thought
+she looked very sad.
+
+"Charmian still out, Madre?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Dressmakers hold hands with eternity, I think."
+
+"Tailors don't, thank Heaven!"
+
+He sat down on the other side of the fire, and they were both silent for
+a moment.
+
+"You're coming to see us in spring?" Claude said, lifting his head.
+
+Sadness seemed to flow from Mrs. Mansfield to him, to be enveloping him.
+He disliked, almost feared, silence just then.
+
+"If you want me."
+
+"If!"
+
+"I'm not quite sure that you will."
+
+Their eyes met. Claude looked away. Did he really wish Madre to come out
+into that life? Had she pierced down to a reluctance in him of which
+till that moment he had scarcely been aware?
+
+"We shall see," she said, more lightly. "Susan Fleet is going out, I
+know, after Christmas, when Adelaide Shiffney goes off to India."
+
+"Yes, she has promised Charmian to come. And Lake will visit us too."
+
+"Naturally. Will you see him in Paris on your way through?"
+
+"Oh, yes! What an enthusiast he is!"
+
+Claude sighed.
+
+"I shall miss you, Madre," he said, somberly almost. "I am so accustomed
+to be within reach of you."
+
+"I hope you will miss me a little. But the man who never leans heavily
+never falls when the small human supports we all use now and then are
+withdrawn. You love me, I know. But you don't need me."
+
+"Then do you think I never lean heavily?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+He moved rather uneasily.
+
+"I--I don't know that it is natural to me to lean. Still--still we
+sometimes do things, get into the habit of doing things, which are not
+natural to us."
+
+"That's a mistake, I think, unless we do them from a fine motive, from
+unselfishness, for instance, from the motive of honor, or to strengthen
+our wills drastically. But I believe we have been provided with a means
+of knowing how far we ought to pursue a course not wholly natural to
+us."
+
+"What means?"
+
+"If the at first apparently unnatural thing soon seems quite natural to
+us, if it becomes, as it were, part of ourselves, if we can incorporate
+it with ourselves, then we have probably made a step upward. But if it
+continues to seem persistently unnatural, I think we are going downward.
+I am one of those who believe in the power called conscience. But I
+expect you knew that already. Here is Charmian!"
+
+Charmian came in, flushed with the cold outside, her long eyes
+sparkling, her hands deep in a huge muff.
+
+"Sitting with Madre, Claude!"
+
+"I have been telling her we expect her to come to us in spring."
+
+"Of course we do. That's settled. I found these cuttings in the hall."
+
+She drew one hand out of her muff. It was holding the newspaper slips of
+Romeike and Curtice.
+
+"They find out almost everything about us," she said, in her clear,
+slightly authoritative voice. "But we shall soon escape from them. A
+year--two years, perhaps--out of the world! It will be a new experience
+for me, won't it, Madretta?"
+
+"Quite new."
+
+The expression in her eyes changed as she looked at Claude.
+
+"And I shall see the island with you."
+
+"The island?" he said.
+
+"Don't you remember--the night I came back from Algiers, and you dined
+here with Madre and me, I told you about a little island I had seen in
+an Algerian garden? I remember the very words I said that night, about
+the little island wanting me to make people far away feel it, know it.
+But I couldn't, because I had no genius to draw in color, and light, and
+sound, and perfume, and to transform them, and give them out again,
+better than the truth, because _I_ was added to them. Don't you
+remember, Claudie?"
+
+"Yes, now I remember."
+
+"You are going to do that where I could not do it."
+
+Claude glanced at Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+And again he felt as if he were enveloped by a sadness that flowed from
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Charmian and her husband went first to the Hotel St. George at Mustapha
+Superieur above Algiers. But they had no intention of remaining there
+for more than two or three weeks. Claude could not compose happily in a
+hotel. And they wished to be economical. As Claude had not yet given up
+the studio, they still had expenses in London. And the house in
+Kensington Square was only let on a six months' lease. They had no money
+to throw away.
+
+During the first few days after their arrival Claude did not think of
+work. He tried to give himself up to the new impressions that crowded in
+upon him in Northern Africa. Charmian eagerly acted as cicerone. That
+spoiled things sometimes for Claude, but he did not care to say so to
+his wife. So he sent that secret to join the many secrets which,
+carefully kept from her, combined to make a sort of subterranean life
+running its course in the darkness of his soul.
+
+In addition to being a cicerone Charmian was a woman full of purpose.
+And she was seldom able, perhaps indeed she feared, to forget this. The
+phantom of Madame Sennier, white-faced, red-haired, determined, haunted
+her. She and Claude were not as other people, who had come from England
+or elsewhere to Algiers. They had an "object." They must not waste their
+time. Claude was to be "steeped" in the atmosphere necessary for the
+production of his Algerian opera. Almost a little anxiously, certainly
+with a definiteness rather destructive, Charmian began the process of
+"steeping" her husband.
+
+She thought that she concealed her intention from Claude. She had
+sufficient knowledge of his character to realize that he might be
+worried if he thought that he was being taken too firmly in hand. She
+honestly wished to be delicate with him, even to be very subtle. But she
+was so keenly, so incessantly alive to the reason of their coming to
+Africa, she was so determined that success should result from their
+coming, that purpose, as it were, oozed out of her. And Claude was
+sensitive. He felt it like a cloud gathering about him, involving him to
+his detriment. Sometimes he was on the edge of speaking of it to
+Charmian. Sometimes he was tempted to break violently away from all his
+precautions, to burst out from secrecy, and to liberate his soul.
+
+But a voice within him held him back. It whispered: "It is too late now.
+You should have done it long ago when you were first married, when first
+she began to assert herself in your art life."
+
+And he kept silence.
+
+Perhaps if he had been thoroughly convinced of the nature of Charmian's
+love for him, he would even now have spoken. But he could not banish
+from him grievous doubts as to the quality of her affection.
+
+She devoted herself to him. She was concentrated upon him, too
+concentrated for his peace. She was ready to give up things for him, as
+she had just given up her life and her friends in England. But why? Was
+it because she loved him, the man? Or was there another--a not
+completely hidden reason?
+
+Charmian and he went together to see the little island. The owner of the
+garden in which it stood, with its tiny lake around it, was absent in
+England. The old Arab house was closed. But the head gardener, a
+Frenchman, who had spent a long life in Algeria, remembered Charmian,
+and begged her to wander wherever she pleased. She took Claude to the
+edge of the lake, and drew him down beside her on a white seat.
+
+And presently she said:
+
+"Claudie, it was here I first knew I should marry you."
+
+Claude, who had been looking in silence at the water, the palm, and the
+curving shores covered with bamboos, flowering shrubs, and trees, turned
+on the seat and looked at her.
+
+"Knew that you would marry me!" he said.
+
+Something in his eyes almost startled her.
+
+"I mean I felt as if Fate meant to unite us."
+
+He still gazed at her with the strange expression in his eyes, an
+expression which made her feel almost uneasy.
+
+"Something here"--she almost faltered, called on her will, and
+continued--"something here seemed to tell me that I should come here
+some day with you. Wasn't it strange?"
+
+"Well, yes, I suppose it was," he answered.
+
+She thought his voice sounded insincere.
+
+"I almost wonder," he added, "that you did not suggest our coming here
+for our honeymoon."
+
+"I thought of it. I wanted to."
+
+"Then why didn't you?"
+
+"I felt as if the right time had not come, as if I had to wait."
+
+"And now the right time has come?"
+
+"Yes, now it has come."
+
+She tried to speak with energy. But her voice sounded doubtful. That
+curious look in his eyes had filled her with an unwonted indecision, had
+troubled her spirit.
+
+The old gardener, who had white whiskers and narrow blue eyes, came down
+the path under the curving pergola, carrying a bunch of white and red
+roses in his earthy hand.
+
+He presented it to Charmian with a bow. A young Arab, who helped in the
+garden, showed for a moment among the shrubs on the hillside. Claude saw
+him, followed him with the eyes of one strange in Africa till he was
+hidden, watched for his reappearance. Charmian got up. The gardener
+spoke in a hoarse voice, telling her something about water-plants and
+blue lilies, of which there were some in the garden, and of which he
+seemed very proud. She glanced at Claude, then walked a few steps with
+the old man and began to talk with him.
+
+It seemed to her that Claude had fallen into a dream.
+
+That day, when Charmian rejoined Claude, she said:
+
+"Old Robert has spoken to me of a villa."
+
+"Old Robert!"
+
+"The gardener. We are intimate friends. He has told me a thousand things
+about Algeria, his life in the army, his family. But what interests
+me--us--is that he knows of a villa to be let by the year,
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It is old but in good repair, pure Arab in style, so
+he says, and only eighty pounds a year. Of course it is quite small. But
+there is a garden. And it is only some ten or twelve minutes from here
+in the best part of Mustapha Inferieur. Shall we go and look at it now?"
+
+"Isn't it rather late?"
+
+"Then to-morrow," she said quickly.
+
+"Yes, let us go to-morrow."
+
+Djenan-el-Maqui proved to be suited to the needs of Charmian and Claude,
+and it charmed them both by its strangeness and beauty. It lay off the
+high road, to the left of the Boulevard Brou, a little way down the
+hill; and though there were many villas near it, and from its garden one
+could look over the town, and see cavalry exercising on the Champs de
+Manoeuvres, which shows like a great brown wound in the fairness of
+the city, it suggested secrecy, retirement, and peace, as only old
+Oriental houses can. Around it was a high white wall, above which the
+white flat-roofed house showed itself, its serene line broken by two
+tiny white cupolas and by one upstanding and lonely chamber built on the
+roof. On passing through a doorway, which was closed by a strong wooden
+door, the Heaths found themselves in a small paved courtyard, which was
+roofed with bougainvillea, and provided with stone benches and a small
+stone table. The sun seemed to drip through the interstices of the
+bright-colored ceiling and made warm patches on the worn gray stone. The
+house, with its thick white walls, and windows protected by grilles,
+confronted them, holding its many secrets.
+
+"We must have it, Claude," Charmian almost whispered.
+
+"But we haven't even seen it!" he retorted, smiling.
+
+"I know it will do."
+
+She was right. Soon Claude loved it even more than she did; loved its
+mysterious pillared drawing-room with the small white arches, the
+faint-colored and ancient Moorish tiles, the divans strewn with
+multi-colored cushions, the cabinets and tables of lacquer work, and the
+low-set windows about which the orange-hued venusta hung; the gallery
+running right round it from which the few small bedrooms opened by low
+black doors; the many nooks and recesses where, always against a
+background of colored tiles, more divans and tiny coffee tables
+suggested repose and the quiet of dreaming. He delighted in the coolness
+and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
+into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
+when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
+him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
+addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
+been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
+formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
+the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
+Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
+purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
+distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
+opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
+the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
+lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
+a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
+beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
+time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
+curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
+tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
+dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
+of the crowding houses of the town.
+
+It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
+the studio in Renwick Place.
+
+"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.
+
+The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
+containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
+dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
+Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
+geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
+and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.
+
+Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
+astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
+Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
+house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
+soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
+at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
+and who alternated between a demeanor full of a graceful and apparently
+fatalistic languor, and fits of almost monkeylike gaiety and mischief
+which Pierre strove to repress. A small Arab girl, dressed like a little
+woman in flowing cotton or muslin, with clinking bracelets and anklets,
+charms on her thin bosom and scarlet and yellow silk handkerchiefs on
+her braided hair, was also perpetually about the house and the
+courtyard. Neither Charmian nor Claude ever quite understood what had
+first led little Fatma there. She was some relation of Bibi's, had
+always known La Grande Jeanne, and seemed in some vague way to belong to
+the ancient house. Very soon they would have missed her had she gone.
+She was gentle, dignified, eternally picturesque. The courtyard roofed
+in by the bougainvillea would have seemed sad and deserted without her.
+
+Charmian had come away from England with enthusiasm, intent on the
+future. Till their departure life had been busy and complicated. She had
+had a thousand things to do, quantities of people to see; friends to
+whom she must say good-bye, acquaintances, dressmakers, modistes,
+tailors. Claude had been busy, too. He had been working at his
+orchestration for hours every day. Charmian had never interrupted him.
+It was her role to keep him to his work if he showed signs of flagging.
+But he had never shown such signs. London had hummed around them with
+its thousand suggestive voices; hinting, as if without intention and
+because it could not do otherwise, at a myriad interests, activities,
+passions. The great city had kept their minds, and even, so it seemed to
+Charmian and to Claude sometimes now in Africa, their hearts occupied.
+Now they confronted a solitary life in a strange country, in a _milieu_
+where they had no friends, no acquaintances even, except two or three
+casually met in the Hotel St. George, and the British Consul-General and
+his wife, who had been to call on them.
+
+Quietude, a curious sort of emptiness, seemed to descend upon them
+during those first days in the villa. Even Charmian felt rather "flat."
+She was conscious of the romance of their situation in this old Arab
+house, looking out over trees to the bright-blue sea. But when she had
+carefully arranged and rearranged the furniture, settled on the places
+for the books, put flowers in the vases, and had several talks with
+Jeanne, she was acutely aware of a certain vagueness, a certain almost
+overpowering oddity. She felt rather like a person who has done in a
+great hurry something she did not really want to do, and who understands
+her true feeling abruptly.
+
+In the course of years she had become so accustomed to the routine of a
+full life, a life charged with incessant variety of interests,
+occupations, amusements, a life offering day after day "something to
+look forward to," and teeming with people whom she knew, that she now
+confronted weeks, months even, of solitude with Claude almost in fear.
+He had his work. She had never been a worker in what she considered the
+real sense, that is a creator striving to "arrive." She conceived of
+such work as filling the worker's whole life. She knew it must be so,
+for she had read many lives of great men. Claude, therefore, had his
+life in Mustapha filled up to the brim for him. But what was she going
+to do?
+
+Claude, on his part, was striving to recapture in Africa the desire for
+popularity, the longing for fame, the wish to give people what they
+wanted of him in art, which he had sometimes felt of late in London. But
+now there were about him no people who knew anything of his art or of
+him. The cries of cultivated London had faded out of his ears. In Africa
+he felt strongly the smallness of that world, the insignificance of
+every little world. His true and indifferent self seemed to gather
+strength. He fought it. He felt that it would be a foe to the
+contemplated opera. He wished Alston Lake were with them, or someone who
+would "wake him up." Charmian, in her present condition, lacked the
+force which he had often felt in London, a force which had often
+secretly irritated and troubled him, but which had not been without
+tonic properties.
+
+With very great difficulty, with a heavy reluctance of which he was
+ashamed, he exerted his will, he forced himself to begin the appointed
+task. With renewed and anxious attention he re-studied the libretto. He
+laid out his music-paper, closed his door, and hoped for a stirring of
+inspiration, or at least of some power within him which would enable him
+to make a start. By experience he knew that once he was in a piece of
+work something helped him, often drove him. He must get to that
+something. He recalled those dreadful first days in Kensington Square,
+when he read Carlyle's _French Revolution_ and sometimes felt criminal.
+There must be nothing of that kind here. And, thank Heaven, this was not
+Kensington Square. Peace and beauty were here. All the social ties were
+broken. If he could not compose an opera here it was certain that he
+could never compose one anywhere. As inspiration was slow in coming he
+began to write almost at haphazard, uncritically, carelessly. "I will do
+a certain amount every day," he said to himself, "whether I feel
+inclined to or not."
+
+Inevitably, as the days went by, he and Charmian grew more at ease in,
+more accustomed to, the new way of life. They fell into habits of
+living. Claude was at last beginning to "feel" his opera. The complete
+novelty of his task puzzled him, put a strain on his nerves and his
+brain. But at the same time it roused perforce his intellectual
+activities. Even the tug at his will which he was obliged frequently to
+give, seemed to strengthen certain fibers of his intellect. This opera
+was not going to be easy in its coming. But it must, it should come!
+
+Charmian decided to take up a course of reading and wrote to Susan
+Fleet, who was in London, begging her to send out a series of books on
+theosophical practice and doctrine suitable to a totally ignorant
+inquirer. Charmian chose to take a course of reading on theosophy simply
+because of her admiration and respect for Susan Fleet. Ever since she
+had known Susan, and made that confession to her, she had been "going"
+to read something about the creed which seemed to make Susan so happy
+and so attractive. But she had never found the time. At length the
+opportunity presented itself.
+
+Susan Fleet sent out a parcel of manuals by Annie Besant and Leadbeater,
+among them _The Astral Plane_, _Reincarnation_, _Death--and After?_ and
+_The Seven Principles of Man_. She also sent bigger books by Sinnet,
+Blavatsky, and Steiner. But she advised Charmian to begin with the
+manuals, and to read slowly, and only a little at a time. Susan was no
+propagandist, but she was a sensible woman. She hated "scamping." If
+Charmian were in earnest she had best be put in the right way. The
+letter which accompanied the books was long and calmly serious. When
+Charmian had read it she felt almost alarmed at the gravity of the task
+which she had chosen to confront. It had been easy to have energy for
+Claude in London. She feared it would be less easy to have energy for
+herself in Mustapha. But she resolved not to shrink back now. Rather
+vaguely she imagined that through theosophy lay the path to serenity and
+patience. Just now--indeed, for a long time to come, she needed, would
+need above all things, patience. In calm must be made the long
+preparations for that which some day would fill her life and Claude's
+with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
+she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
+so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
+Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing _Le
+Paradis Terrestre_, how long he had taken in the creation of that
+stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.
+
+She had begun with _The Seven Principles of Man_. The short preface had
+attracted her. "Life easier to bear--death easier to face." If theosophy
+helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
+inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
+But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
+in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
+she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
+crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
+attention of the world--they were all so far away.
+
+Resolutely she read _The Seven Principles of Man_.
+
+Then she dipped into _Reincarnation_ and _Death--and After?_
+
+Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
+received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
+illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
+read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
+with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
+in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
+renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
+traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
+unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
+she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
+thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
+her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint--as, say,
+Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
+certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
+nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
+hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
+her life.
+
+Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
+began to imagine herself without her present aim in her life.
+
+One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
+above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
+for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
+leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
+dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
+permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
+playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
+be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
+could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
+them.
+
+Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
+the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
+family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
+Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and
+sent him a cheque of L100 for his work.
+
+Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
+a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
+handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
+and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
+curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
+covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.
+
+Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
+cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
+son, but who was now resigned to the latter's _etranges folies_. The
+fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
+then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
+down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
+of him.
+
+When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
+received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
+denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
+ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
+the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
+with him, and preparing him for Claude.
+
+This man must "fire" Claude.
+
+Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
+the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
+mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
+upon humanity. At first he was very polite and formal, a mere bundle of
+good manners. But under Charmian's carefully calculated influence, he
+changed. He perhaps guessed what her object was, guessed that success
+for him might be involved in it. And, suddenly abandoning his formality,
+he exclaimed:
+
+"_Eh bien_, madame! And of what nature is your husband?"
+
+Charmian looked at him and hesitated.
+
+"Is he bold, strong, fierce, open-hearted? Has he lived, loved, and
+suffered? Or is he gentle, closed, retiring, subtle, morbid perhaps?
+Does he live in the dreams of his soul, in the twilight of his beautiful
+imaginings?"
+
+Lifting his rather coarse and powerful hands to his moustache, he pulled
+at the upward-pointing ends.
+
+"I wish to know this," he exclaimed. "Because it is important for me. My
+libretto was written by one who has lived, and the man who sets it to
+music must have lived also to do it justice."
+
+There was a fierceness, characteristic of Algerians of a certain class,
+in his manner now that he had got rid of his first formality.
+
+Charmian felt slightly embarrassed. At that moment she hoped strongly
+that her husband would not come down. For the first time she realized
+the gulf fixed between Claude and the libretto which she had found for
+him. But he must bridge that gulf out here. She looked hard at this
+short, brusque, and rather violent young man. Armand Gillier must help
+Claude to bridge that gulf.
+
+"Take another cigarette. I'll tell you about my husband," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Mrs. Shiffney, who was perpetually changing her mind in the chase after
+happiness, changed it about India. After all the preparations had been
+made, innumerable gowns and hats had been bought, a nice party had been
+arranged, and the yacht had been "sent round" to Naples, she decided
+that she did not want to go, had never wanted to go. Whether the
+defection of a certain Spanish ex-diplomat, who was to have been among
+the guests, had anything to do with her sudden dislike of "that boresome
+India," perhaps only she knew, and the ex-diplomat guessed. The whole
+thing was abruptly given up, and January found her in Grosvenor Square,
+much disgusted with her persecution by Fate, and wondering what on earth
+was to become of her.
+
+In such crises she generally sent for Susan Fleet, if the theosophist
+were within reach. She now decided to telegraph to Folkestone, where
+Susan was staying in lodgings not far from the house of dear old Mrs.
+Simpkins. Susan replied that she would come up on the following day, and
+she duly arrived just before the hour of lunch.
+
+She found Mrs. Shiffney dressed to go out.
+
+"Oh, Susan, what a mercy to see you! We are going to the Ritz. We shall
+be by ourselves. I want you to advise me what to do. Things have got so
+mixed up. Is the motor there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come along, then."
+
+At the Ritz, although she met many acquaintances, Mrs. Shiffney would
+not join any one for lunch or let any one join her.
+
+"Susan and I have important matters to discuss," she said, smiling.
+
+Her face and manner had completely changed directly she got out of the
+motor. She now looked radiant, like one for whom life held nothing but
+good things. And all the time she and Susan were lunching and talking
+she preserved a radiant demeanor. Her reward was that everyone said how
+handsome Adelaide Shiffney was looking. She even succeeded in continuing
+to look handsome when she found that Susan had made private plans for
+the immediate future.
+
+"I've promised to go to Algiers," Susan said over the _oeufs en
+cocotte_, when Mrs. Shiffney asked what was to be done to make things
+lively.
+
+"To Algiers! Why? What is there to do there? You know it inside out."
+
+"Scarcely that. I'm going to stay with Charmian Heath."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's large mouth suddenly looked a little hard, though her
+general expression hardly altered.
+
+"Oh! Whereabouts are they?"
+
+"Up at Mustapha, not far from Mrs. Graham."
+
+"They say he's trying to write an opera. Poor fellow! The very last
+thing he could do, I should think. But she pushes him on. Since that
+song of his--I forget the name, heart something or other--her head has
+been completely turned about his talent. The fact is, Susan, Sennier's
+sudden fame has turned all their heads, the young composers, _les
+jeunes_, you know. They are all trying to write operas. In Paris it's
+too absurd! But an Englishman, with his temperament, too--Oliver
+Cromwell in Harris tweed!--she must be mad. Of course even if he ever
+finishes it he will never get it produced."
+
+Susan quietly went on eating her eggs.
+
+"A totally unknown man. She thinks that song has made him quite a
+celebrity. But nobody has ever heard of him."
+
+"Nobody had ever heard of Sennier till that night at Covent Garden,"
+observed Susan, lifting a glass of water to her lips.
+
+"Oh, yes, they had!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's musical passion for Sennier often led her to embroider
+facts.
+
+"Among the people who matter in Paris he was quite famous."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know that," said Susan, without a trace of doubt or of
+sarcasm.
+
+"How could you? Besides, Sennier is a great man, the only man we have,
+in fact. So you were going to stay with the Heaths?"
+
+"I am going. I promised Charmian Heath."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In about ten days, I think. My mother is rather unwell, only a bad
+cold. But I like to be at Folkestone to help Mrs. Simpkins."
+
+"Susan, what an extraordinary person you are!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You are. But you are so extraordinary that I could never make you see
+why. Sandringham and Mrs. Simpkins! There is no one like you."
+
+She branched off to various topics, but presently returned to the
+Algerian visit.
+
+"What do you think of Charmian Heath, Susan--really think, I mean? Do
+you care for her?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean as a theosophist, I mean as a human being."
+
+Susan smiled. "We are human beings."
+
+"You are certainly. But, of course, I know you embrace Charmian Heath
+with your universal love, just as you embrace me and Mrs. Simpkins and
+the King and the crossing-sweeper at the corner. That doesn't interest
+me. I wish to know whether you like her as you don't like me and the
+King and the crossing-sweeper?"
+
+"Charmian Heath and I are good friends. I am interested in her."
+
+"In a woman!"
+
+"Greatly because she is a woman."
+
+"I know you're a suffragette at heart!"
+
+They talked a little about politics. When coffee came, Mrs. Shiffney
+suddenly said:
+
+"I'll take you over to Algiers, Susan."
+
+"But you don't want to go there."
+
+"It's absurd your going in one of those awful steamers from Marseilles
+when the yacht is only about half an hour away."
+
+"Half an hour! I thought she was at Naples."
+
+"I said _about_ half an hour on purpose to be accurate."
+
+"Really, I would just as soon take the steamer," said Susan.
+
+This definite, though very gentle, resistance to her suddenly conceived
+project decided Mrs. Shiffney. If Susan genuinely wished to go to
+Algiers by the public steamer, then she would have to go on the yacht.
+Mrs. Shiffney had realized from the beginning of their conversation that
+Susan wished to go to Algiers alone. There had been something in the
+tone of her voice, in her expression, her quiet manner, which had
+convinced Mrs. Shiffney of that. Her curiosity was awake, and something
+else.
+
+"Susan dear, you must allow me to take care of you as far as Algiers,"
+she said. "If you don't want me there I'll just put you ashore on the
+beach, near Cap Matifou or somewhere, and leave you there with your
+trunks. You are an eccentric, but that's no reason why you shouldn't
+have a comfortable voyage."
+
+"Very well. It's very kind of you, Adelaide," Susan returned, without a
+trace of vexation.
+
+That very day Mrs. Shiffney telegraphed to the captain of the yacht to
+bring her round to Marseilles. In the evening Susan Fleet returned to
+Folkestone.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney did not intend to make the journey alone with Susan, and
+to be left "in the air" at Algiers. She must get a man or two. After a
+few minutes' thought she sent a message to Max Elliot asking him to look
+in upon her. When he came she invited him to join the party.
+
+"You must come," she said. "Only ten days or so. Surely you can get
+away. And you'll see your protege, Mr. Heath."
+
+"My protege!"
+
+"Well, you were the first to discover him."
+
+"But he's impossible. A charming fellow with undoubted talent, but so
+bearish about his music. I gave it up, as you know, though I'm always
+the Heaths' very good friend."
+
+"Well, but his song?"
+
+"One song! What's that? And his wife made him compose it. Nobody has
+ever heard his really fine work, his Te Deum, and his settings of sacred
+words."
+
+"His wife and mother have, I believe."
+
+"His wife--yes. And she will take care no one else ever does hear them
+now."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Max Elliot looked at Mrs. Shiffney. Into his big and genial eyes there
+came an expression of light sarcasm, almost of contempt. He shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"Art and the world!" he said enigmatically.
+
+"Well, but, Max, don't you represent the world in connection with the
+art of music?"
+
+"I! Do I?" he said, suddenly grave.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I should think so, _mon cher_. I don't believe either you or I have a
+right to talk!"
+
+It was a moment of truth, and was followed, as truth often is, by a
+moment of silence. Then Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Claude Heath has gone to Algiers to compose an opera."
+
+"Oh, all this opera madness is owing to the success of Jacques!"
+
+"Of course. I know that. But another Jacques might spring up, I suppose.
+Henriette wouldn't like that."
+
+"Like it!" exclaimed Max Elliot, twisting his thick lips. "She wants a
+clear field for the next big event. And I must say she deserves it."
+
+"Just what I think. Well, you'll come to Algiers and hear how the new
+opera's getting on?"
+
+He glanced at her determined eyes.
+
+"Yes, I'll come. But it must be only for ten days. I've got such a lot
+of work on hand!"
+
+"Perhaps I'll ask Ferdinand to come, too. Or--"
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Shiffney leaned forward. Her face had become eager, almost
+excited.
+
+"Shall I ask Henriette and Jacques to come with us? They don't go to New
+York this year."
+
+Max Elliot seemed to hesitate. He was an enthusiast, and apt to be
+carried away by his enthusiasms, sometimes even into absurdity. But he
+was a thoroughly good fellow, and had not the slightest aptitude or
+taste for intrigue. Mrs. Shiffney saw his hesitation.
+
+"I will ask them," she said, "Charmian Heath will love to know them, I'm
+sure. She has such a fine taste in celebrities."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a brilliant day in the first week of February _The Wanderer_ glided
+into the harbor of Algiers, and, like a sentient being with a
+discriminating brain, picked her way to her moorings. On board of her
+were Mrs. Shiffney, Susan Fleet, Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and
+Max Elliot.
+
+The composer had been very ill on the voyage. His lamentations and cries
+of "_Ah, mon Dieu!_" and "_O la la la!_" had been distressing. Madame
+Sennier had never left him. She had nursed him as if he were a child,
+holding his poor stomach and back in the great crises of his malady,
+laying him firmly on his enormous pillows when exhaustion brought a
+moment of respite, feeding him with a spoon and drenching him with eau
+de Cologne. She now gave him her arm to help him on deck, twining a
+muffler round his meager throat.
+
+"It's lovely, my cabbage! You must lift the head! You must regard the
+jewelled Colonial crown of our beloved France!"
+
+"_Ah, mon Dieu! O la la la!_" replied her celebrated husband.
+
+"My little chicken, you must have courage!"
+
+Susan Fleet had let Charmian know how she was coming, and had mentioned
+Mrs. Shiffney. But she had said nothing about the Senniers, for the
+simple reason that Adelaide had told her nothing about them until they
+stepped into the _wagon-lit_ in Paris. Then she had remarked carelessly:
+
+"Oh, yes, I believe they're crossing with us! Why not?"
+
+As soon as the yacht was moored the whole party prepared to leave her.
+Rooms had been engaged in advance at the Hotel St. George. And Susan
+Fleet was going at once to Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"Tell Charmian Heath I'll look in this afternoon with Max, Susan, about
+tea-time. Don't say anything about the Senniers. They won't come, I'm
+sure. He says he's going straight to bed directly he reaches the hotel.
+Charmian would be disappointed. I'll explain to her."
+
+These were Mrs. Shiffney's last words to Susan, as she pulled down her
+thick white veil, opened her parasol, and stepped into the landau to
+drive up to the hotel. Madame Sennier was already in the carriage, where
+the composer lay back opposite to her with closed eyes. Even the
+brilliant sunshine, the soft and delicious air, the gay cries and the
+movement at the wharf, where many Arabs were unloading bales of goods
+from the ships, or were touting for employment as porters and guides,
+failed to rouse him.
+
+"I must go to bed!" was his sole remark.
+
+"My cat, you shall have the best bed in Africa and stay there for a
+week. Only have courage for another five minutes!" said his wife,
+speaking to him with the intonation of a strong-hearted mother
+reassuring a little child.
+
+When Susan arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Charmian there alone.
+Charmian greeted her eagerly, but looked at her anxiously, almost
+suspiciously, after the first kiss.
+
+"Where's Adelaide? On the yacht?"
+
+"She's gone to the Hotel St. George."
+
+"Oh! Close to us! How long is she going to stay? Oh, Susan, why did you
+let her come?"
+
+"I couldn't help it. But why need you mind?"
+
+"Adelaide hates me!"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"She does. And you know it."
+
+"I really don't think she has time to hate you, Charmian. And Adelaide
+can be very kind."
+
+"Your theosophy prevents you from allowing that there are any faults in
+your friends. Yes, Susan, it does."
+
+"Have you read the manuals carefully?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't think of them now. Adelaide's being here will spoil
+everything."
+
+"No it won't! She'll only stay a day or two, not that, perhaps."
+
+"But why did she come at all?"
+
+"She didn't tell me. She's coming to see you to-day with Mr. Elliot."
+
+"Max Elliot, too! Of course it is Claude whom Adelaide wants to see. I
+quite understand that. But he's not here."
+
+"What has become of him?"
+
+"Susan, you know of course he wished to welcome you. He is devoted to
+you. But--well, the truth is"--she slightly lowered her voice, although
+there was no one in the room--"he had to go away for the opera. He has
+gone to Constantine with Armand Gillier, the author of the libretto, to
+study the native music there, and military life, I believe. There is a
+big garrison at Constantine, you know. Monsieur Gillier is a most
+valuable friend for Claude, and can help him tremendously in many ways;
+with the opera, I mean."
+
+She stopped. Then she added:
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney might have been of great use to Claude, too. But
+before we were married he offended her, I think. And now, of course,
+she's on the other side."
+
+"I don't know whether I quite understand what you mean."
+
+"She's on Sennier's side."
+
+It seemed to Susan Fleet that Charmian was living rather prematurely in
+a future that was somewhat problematic. But she only said:
+
+"Don't let us make too much of it. I hoped you might learn from the
+manuals not to worry. But while I'm here we can talk them over, if you
+like."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Charmian, changing, melting almost into happiness. "Oh,
+I am glad you've come, even though it entails Adelaide for a day or two.
+Of course she knows about the opera?"
+
+"Yes, she does."
+
+"I knew." She looked into Susan's face, smiled, and concluded: "Never
+mind!"
+
+At five o'clock that day the peace of Djenan-el-Maqui was broken by the
+sound of animated voices in the courtyard. A bell jangled and a moment
+later Pierre, with his most birdlike demeanor, ushered into the
+drawing-room Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, her husband, and Max
+Elliot.
+
+"What a dear little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round
+her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing
+worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite envy
+them."
+
+"It's charming!" said Max Elliot.
+
+"Love in a harem! Better than in a cottage."
+
+Madame Sennier pushed up her huge floating veil and showed her powerful
+face of a clown covered with white pigment. Her lips made a scarlet bar
+across it.
+
+"What is she like? I remember the man. He's clever."
+
+"Oh, she--she is charming; thin and charming."
+
+"That's well!" observed the composer. "That's very well."
+
+He appeared to have quite recovered from his despair, and now looked
+almost defiantly cheerful. Small in body, with a narrow chest and
+shoulders, and a weakly growing beard, he was nevertheless remarkable,
+even striking in appearance. His large nose suggested Semitic blood, but
+also power, which was shown, too, in his immense forehead and strong,
+energetic head. He had a habit of blinking his eyes. But they were fine
+eyes, full of feeling, imagination, and emotion, but also at moments
+full of sarcasm and shrewdness. His dark, hairy and small hands were
+rather monkeylike, and looked destructive.
+
+"Every woman should be thin and charming," he continued. "The camel
+species, the elephant-type, the cowlike ruminating specimen--milky
+mother of the lowing herd, as an English poet has expressed it, and very
+well, too--should"--he flung out one little hairy hand vehemently--"_go_
+with the advance of corset-makers and civilization. She comes!"
+
+The door had opened, and Charmian came in.
+
+Instantly her eyes fastened on Madame Sennier.
+
+She was so surprised that she stood still by the door, and her whole
+face was suffused with blood. So much had this woman meant, did she
+still mean in Charmian's life, that even the habit of the world did not
+help Charmian to complete self-control at this moment.
+
+"I'm afraid our coming has quite startled you," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+"Didn't Susan tell you we were going to look in?"
+
+"Yes, of course. I'm delighted!"
+
+Charmian moved. She was secretly furious with herself.
+
+Max Elliot took her hand, and Mrs. Shiffney carelessly introduced the
+Senniers.
+
+"What a dear little retreat you've found here, and how deliciously
+you've arranged everything," she said. "You've made a perfect nest for
+your genius. We are all longing to see him."
+
+They were sitting now. Charmian was on a divan beside Madame Sennier.
+
+"A clever man!" said Madame Sennier, decisively. "I met him once at the
+opera. You remember, Jacques, I told you what he said about your
+orchestration?"
+
+"Yes, yes, about my use of the flutes in connection with muted strings
+and the horns to give the effect of water."
+
+"I want Monsieur Sennier to know him," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"I'm so sorry, but he's not here," said Charmian.
+
+Just then Susan Fleet came in. Mrs. Shiffney turned to her.
+
+"Susan! Such a disappointment! But, of course, you know!"
+
+"About Mr. Heath? Yes."
+
+"Has he gone back to England?" said Max Elliot.
+
+"Oh, no. He's in Algeria."
+
+Charmian obviously hesitated, saw that any want of frankness would seem
+extraordinary, and added:
+
+"He has gone to Constantine with a friend."
+
+Her voice was reluctant.
+
+"Do have some tea!" she added quickly, pulling the bell, which Pierre
+promptly answered with the tea things.
+
+"Constantine!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "That's no distance, only a night in
+the train. Can't you persuade him to come back and see us? Do be a dear
+and telegraph."
+
+She spoke in her most airy way.
+
+"I would in a minute. But he's not gone merely to amuse himself."
+
+"The opera!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "By the way, is it indiscreet to ask
+who wrote the libretto?"
+
+Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.
+
+"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His
+name is Gillier."
+
+"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out
+his hands in a gesture of surprise.
+
+"Yes. Do you know him?"
+
+"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three
+libretti by him have I rejected--three, madame. He challenged me to a
+duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he
+cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband
+accepted?"
+
+Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant
+eyes--they were yellow eyes, and small--fixed upon her.
+
+"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.
+
+Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was
+clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can
+say!"
+
+"Brave! But why?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.
+
+"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."
+
+"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what
+does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"
+
+She had turned to Max Elliot.
+
+"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously
+ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the
+Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"
+
+She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a
+dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her
+immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because
+she was the hindmost. That was certain.
+
+Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went
+over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation
+with Madame Sennier.
+
+She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with
+her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was
+completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red
+mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame
+Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and
+disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge
+that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of
+ambition. She felt like an ignorant child, and almost preposterously
+English, as she talked to Madame Sennier, who became voluble in reply.
+There was something meridional in her manner and her fluency. Charmian
+felt sure that Madame Sennier had risen out of depths about which she,
+Charmian, knew nothing. She wondered if this woman loved her husband, or
+only loved the genius in him which helped her to rise, which brought her
+wealth, influence, even, it seemed, a curious adoration. She wondered,
+too, if this woman had known the first Madame Sennier.
+
+Presently Mrs. Shiffney got up. She was apt to be restless.
+
+"May we go and look about outside?" she said.
+
+"Of course. Shall I--"
+
+"No, no. I see you are interested in each other. Two wives of geniuses!
+I don't want to spoil it. Come, Jacques, let us explore."
+
+They went away to the court of the goldfish. Max Elliot followed them.
+As they went Madame Sennier fixed her eyes for a moment on her departing
+husband. In that moment Charmian found out something. Madame Sennier
+certainly cared for the man, as well as for the composer. Charmian
+fancied that love, that softness for the one, bred hatred, hardness, for
+many others, that it was an exclusive and almost terrible love. Now that
+she was alone with Madame Sennier, enclosed as it were in that strong
+perfume, she felt almost afraid of her. She was conscious of being with
+someone far cleverer than herself. And she realized what an effective
+weapon in certain hands is an absolute lack of scruple. It seemed to her
+as she sat and talked, about Paris, America, London, art, music, that
+this woman must have divined her secret and intense ambition. Those
+yellow eyes had surely looked into her soul, and knew that she had
+brought Claude to Algeria in order that some day he might come forth as
+the rival of Jacques Sennier. Almost she felt guilty. She made a strong
+effort, and turned the conversation to the subject of the _Paradis
+Terrestre_, expressing her enthusiasm for it.
+
+Madame Sennier received the praises with an air of gracious
+indifference, as if her husband's opera were now so famous that it was
+scarcely worth while to talk about it. This carelessness accentuated
+brutally the difference between her position and Charmian's. And it
+stung Charmian into indiscretion. Something fiery and impetuous seemed
+to rise up in her, something that wanted to fight. She began to speak of
+her husband's talent.
+
+Madame Sennier listened politely, as one who listens on a height to
+small voices stealing vaguely up from below. Charmian began to underline
+things. It was as if one of the voices from below became strident in the
+determination to be adequately heard, to make its due effect. Finally
+she was betrayed into saying:
+
+"Of course we wives of composers are apt to be prejudiced."
+
+Madame Sennier stared.
+
+"But," added Charmian, "people who really know think a great deal of my
+husband; Mr. Crayford, for instance."
+
+Directly she had said this she repented of it. She realized that Claude
+would have hated the remark had he heard it.
+
+Madame Sennier seemed unimpressed, and at that moment the others came in
+from the garden. But Charmian, why she did not know, felt increasing
+regret for her inadvertence. She even wished that Madame Sennier had
+shown some emotion, surprise, even contemptuous incredulity. The
+complete blankness of the Frenchwoman at that moment made Charmian
+uneasy.
+
+When they were all going Mrs. Shiffney insisted on Charmian and Susan
+Fleet dining at the Hotel St. George that evening. Charmian wanted to
+refuse and wished to go. Of course she accepted. She and Susan had no
+engagement to plead.
+
+Jacques Sennier clasped her hands on parting and gazed fervently into
+her eyes.
+
+[Illustration: "'OF COURSE WE WIVES OF COMPOSERS ARE APT TO BE
+PREJUDICED'"--_Page 242_]
+
+"Let me come sometimes and sit in your garden, may I, Madame?" he said,
+as if begging for some great boon. "Only"--he lowered his voice--"only
+till your husband comes back. There is inspiration here!"
+
+Charmian knew he was talking nonsense. Nevertheless she glanced round
+half in dread of Madame Sennier. The yellow eyes were smiling. The white
+face looked humorously sarcastic.
+
+"Of course! Whenever you like!" she said lightly.
+
+The monkeylike hands pressed hers more closely.
+
+"The freedom of Africa, you give it me!"
+
+He whisked round, with a sharp and absurd movement, and joined the
+others.
+
+"She is delicious!" he observed, as they walked away. "But she is very
+undeveloped. She has certainly never suffered. And no woman can be of
+much use to an artist unless she has suffered."
+
+"Henriette, have you suffered?" said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
+
+"Terribly!" said Jacques Sennier, answering for his wife. "But
+unfortunately not through me. That is the great flaw in our connection."
+
+He frowned.
+
+"I must make her suffer!" he muttered.
+
+"My cabbage, you are a little fool and you know it!" observed Madame
+Sennier imperturbably. "_Mon Dieu!_ What dust!"
+
+They had emerged into the road, and were enveloped in a cloud sent up by
+a passing motor.
+
+"If it doesn't rain, or they don't water the roads, I shall run away to
+Constantine," observed Mrs. Shiffney. "There'll be no dust in
+Constantine at this time of year."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+In the evening of the following day Charmian and Susan Fleet had just
+sat down to dinner, and Pierre was about to lift the lid off the soup
+tureen, when there was a ring at the front door bell.
+
+"What can that be?" said Charmian.
+
+She looked at Susan.
+
+"Susan, I feel as if it were somebody, or something important."
+
+Pierre raised the lid with a pathetic gesture, and went out carrying it
+high in his left hand.
+
+"I wonder what it is?" said Charmian.
+
+All day they had not seen Mrs. Shiffney or her party. They had passed
+the hours alone in the garden, talking, working, reading, but chiefly
+discussing Charmian's affairs. And calm had flowed upon Charmian, had
+enfolded her almost against her will. At the end of the day she had
+said:
+
+"Susan, you do me more good than anyone I know. I don't understand how
+it is, but you seem to purify me almost, as a breeze from the sea--when
+it's calm--purifies a room if you open the window to it."
+
+But now, as she waited for Pierre's return, she felt strung up and
+excited.
+
+"If it should be Claude come back!" she said.
+
+"Would he ring?" asked Susan.
+
+"No. But he might!"
+
+At this moment a loud murmur of talk was audible in the hall, and then a
+voice exclaiming:
+
+"_Ca ne fait rien! Ca ne fait rien! Laissez moi passer, mon bon!_"
+
+"Surely it's Monsieur Sennier!" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+As she spoke, the door opened and the composer entered, pushing past
+Pierre, whose thin face wore an outraged look.
+
+"_Me voici!_" he exclaimed. "Deserted, abandoned, I come to you. How
+can I eat alone in a hotel? It is impossible! I tried. I sat down. They
+brought me caviare, _potage_. I looked, raised my fork, my spoon.
+Impossible! Will you save me from myself? See, I am in my smoking! I
+shall not disgrace you."
+
+"Of course! Pierre, please lay another place. But who has abandoned
+you?"
+
+"Everyone--Henriette, Adelaide, even the faithful Max. They would have
+taken me, but I refused to go."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Batna, Biskra, _que sais-je_? Adelaide is restless as an enraged cat!"
+
+He sat down, and began greedily to eat his soup.
+
+"Ah, this is good! Your cook is to be loved. For once--may I?"
+
+Glancing up whimsically, almost like a child, he lifted his napkin
+toward his collar.
+
+"I may! Madame, you are an angel. You are a flock of angels. Why, I said
+to them, should I leave this beautiful city to throw myself into the
+arms of a mad librettist, who desires my blood simply because he cannot
+write? Must genius die because an idiot has practised on bottles with a
+revolver? It shall not be!"
+
+"Do you mean Monsieur Gillier? Then they are going to Constantine!" said
+Charmian sharply.
+
+"To Constantine, Tunis, Batna, Biskra, the Sahara--_que sais-je_?
+Adelaide is like a cat enraged! She cannot rest! And she has seduced my
+Henriette."
+
+He seemed perfectly contented, ate an excellent dinner, stayed till very
+late in the night, talked, joked, and finally, sitting down at the
+piano, played and sang. He was by turns a farceur, a wit, a man of
+emotion, a man with a touch of genius. And in everything he said and did
+he was almost preposterously unreserved. He seemed to be child, monkey
+and artist in combination. It was inconceivable that he could ever feel
+embarrassed or self-conscious.
+
+At first, after his unexpected entry, Charmian had been almost painfully
+preoccupied. Sennier, without apparently noticing this, broke her
+preoccupation down. He was an egoist, but a singularly amusing and even
+attractive one, throwing open every door, and begging you to admire and
+delight in every room. Charmian began to study him, this man of a great
+success. How different he was from Claude. Now that she was with Sennier
+she was more sharply aware of Claude's reserve than she had ever been
+before, of a certain rigidity which underlay all the apparent social
+readiness.
+
+When Sennier sang, in a voice that scarcely existed but that charmed,
+she was really entranced. When he played after midnight she was excited,
+intensely excited.
+
+It was past one o'clock when he left reluctantly, promising to return on
+the morrow, to take all his meals at Djenan-el-Maqui, to live there,
+except for the very few hours claimed by sleep, till the "cat enraged"
+and his wife returned. Charmian helped him to put on his coat. He
+resigned himself to her hands like a child. Standing quite still, he
+permitted her to button the coat. He left, singing an air from an opera
+he was composing, arm in arm with Pierre, who was to escort him to his
+hotel.
+
+"I dare not go alone!" he exclaimed. "I am afraid of the Arabs! The
+Arabs are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"
+
+When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
+Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
+because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
+instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
+coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
+gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
+with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
+she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
+Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
+apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
+returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
+either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
+interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
+they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
+she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of
+her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do
+much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.
+
+Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
+blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
+resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
+wished her "Good-night."
+
+"I know I shan't sleep," she said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."
+
+"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."
+
+Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
+of resolving quietly on anything.
+
+She lay awake nearly all night.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
+night-train travelling to Constantine.
+
+It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
+abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
+garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
+to the big terrace, and had said:
+
+"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
+to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."
+
+Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
+had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
+to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand Gillier.
+
+Elliot had a very kind heart, and by its light he sometimes read clearly
+a human prose that did not please him. Now, as he lay in his narrow
+berth in the _wagon-lit_ jolting toward Constantine, he read some of
+Adelaide Shiffney's prose. Faintly, for the train was noisy, he heard
+voices in the next compartment, where Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier
+were talking in their berths. Mrs. Shiffney was in the top berth. That
+fact gave the measure of Madame Sennier's iron will.
+
+"You really believe it?" cried Madame Sennier.
+
+"How is one to know? But Crayford is moving Heaven and earth to find a
+genius. He may have his eye on Claude Heath. He believes in _les
+jeunes_."
+
+"Jacques is forty."
+
+"If one has arrived it doesn't matter much what age one is."
+
+"You don't think Crayford can have given this man a secret commission to
+compose an opera?"
+
+"Oh, no. Why should he? Besides, if he had, she would have let it out.
+She could never have kept such a thing to herself."
+
+"Max thought his music wonderful, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, but it was all sacred. Te Deums, and things of that sort that
+nobody on earth would ever listen to."
+
+"I should like to see the libretto."
+
+"What? I can't hear. I'm right up against the roof, and the noise is
+dreadful."
+
+"I say, I should like to see the libretto!" almost screamed Madame
+Sennier.
+
+"Probably it's one that Jacques refused."
+
+"No, it can't be."
+
+"What?"
+
+"No, it can't be. He never saw a libretto that was Algerian. And this
+one evidently is. I wonder if it's a good one."
+
+"Make him show it to you."
+
+"Gillier! He wouldn't. He hates us both."
+
+"Not Gillier, Claude Heath."
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney leaned desperately out over the side of her narrow berth.
+
+"Claude Heath--or I'll make him."
+
+"I never cared very much for the one Jacques is setting for the
+Metropolitan. But it was the best sent in. I chose it. I read nearly a
+hundred. It would be just like Gillier to write something really fine,
+and then not to let us see it. I always knew he was clever and might
+succeed some day."
+
+"I'll get hold of it for you."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'll get hold of it for you from Heath. When will Jacques be ready, do
+you think?"
+
+"Oh, not for ages. He works slowly, and I never interfere with him.
+Nobody but a fool would interfere with the method of a man of genius."
+
+"Do you think Charmian Heath is a fool?"
+
+At this moment the train suddenly slackened, and Mrs. Shiffney and
+Madame Sennier, leaning down and up, exchanged sibilant and almost
+simultaneous hushes.
+
+Max Elliot heard them quite distinctly. They were the only part of the
+conversation which reached him.
+
+He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to
+their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that
+these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were
+driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something
+secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided
+to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly
+disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of
+other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between
+Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame.
+Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd,
+he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish
+that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path
+clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of
+every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man.
+
+Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the
+nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very
+little about her.
+
+She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's
+family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness
+that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out.
+Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess.
+Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been
+very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had
+throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some
+women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and
+underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind.
+She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the
+midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When
+she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected
+with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable
+to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques
+was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped
+to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was
+capable of betraying everyone for Jacques.
+
+Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He
+was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at
+Mustapha within a week.
+
+After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more.
+
+"It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for
+the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still
+more when Madame Sennier replied:
+
+"I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being
+where you are."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney made no reply, but turned carefully over till she was
+looking at the wall.
+
+"Why do I do things for this woman?" was her thought. She had told
+herself more than once that she was travelling to Constantine for
+Henriette. Apparently she was actually beginning to believe her own
+statement. She closed her eyes, opened them again, looked at the
+ceiling, which almost touched her nose, and at the wall, which her nose
+almost touched.
+
+"Why does a woman ever do anything for another woman?" she asked
+herself, amplifying her first thought.
+
+Adelaide Shiffney in an upper berth! It was the incredible
+accomplished!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+"What a setting for melodrama!" said Mrs. Shiffney. She was standing on
+the balcony of a corner room on the second floor of the Grand Hotel at
+Constantine, looking down on the Place de la Breche. Evening was
+beginning to fall. The city roared a tumultuous serenade to its delicate
+beauty. The voices sent up from the dusty gardens, the squares, and the
+winding alleys, from the teeming bazaars, the dancing-houses, the houses
+of pleasure, and the painted Moorish cafes, seemed to grow more defiant
+as the light grew colder on the great slopes of the mountains that
+surround Constantine, as in the folds of the shallow valleys the
+plantations of eucalyptus darkened beside the streams.
+
+Madame Sennier was standing with Mrs. Shiffney and was also looking
+down.
+
+"Listen to all the voices!" she said. "Nobody but Jacques could ever get
+this sort of effect into an opera."
+
+A huge diligence, painted yellow, green, and red, with an immense hood
+beneath which crowded Arabs vaguely showed, came slowly down the hill,
+drawn by seven gray horses. The military Governor passed by on
+horseback, preceded by a mounted soldier, and followed by two more
+soldiers and by a Spahi, whose red jacket gleamed against the white coat
+of his prancing stallion. Bugles sounded; bells rang; a donkey brayed
+with dreary violence in a side street. Somewhere a mandoline was being
+thrummed, and a very French voice rose above it singing a song of the
+Paris pavements. In the large cafes just below the balcony where the two
+women were standing crowds of people were seated at little tables,
+sipping absinthe, vermouth, and bright-colored syrups. Among the
+Europeans of various nations the dignified and ample figures of
+well-dressed Arabs in pale blue, green, brown, and white burnouses, with
+high turbans bound by ropes of camel's hair, stood out, the conquered
+looking like conquerors.
+
+"_Cirez! Cirez!"_ cried incessantly the Arab boot-polishers, who
+scuffled and played tricks among themselves while they waited for
+customers. "_Cirez, moosou! Cirez!_" Long wagons, loaded with stone from
+the quarries of the Gorge, jangled by, some of them drawn by mixed teams
+of eleven horses and mules, on whose necks chimed collars of bells.
+Chauffeurs sounded the horns of their motors as they slowly crept
+through the nonchalant crowd of natives, which had gathered in front of
+the post-office and the Municipal Theater to discuss the affairs of the
+day. Maltese coachmen, seated on the boxes of large landaus, cracked
+their whips to announce to the Kabyle Chasseurs of the two hotels the
+return of travellers from their excursions. Omnibuses rolled slowly up
+from the station loaded with luggage, which was vehemently grasped by
+native porters, brought to earth, and carried in with eager violence.
+The animation of the city was intense, and had in it something barbaric
+and almost savage, something that seemed undisciplined, bred of the
+orange and red soil, of the orange and red rocks, of the snow and
+sun-smitten mountains, of the terrific gorges and precipices which made
+the landscape vital and almost terrible.
+
+Yet in the evening light the distant slopes, the sharply cut silhouettes
+of the hills, held a strange and exquisitely delicate serenity. The sky,
+cloudless, shot with primrose, blue, and green, deepening toward the
+West into a red that was flecked with gold, was calm and almost tender.
+Nature showed two sides of her soul; but humanity seemed to respond only
+to the side that was fierce and violent.
+
+"What a setting for melodrama!" repeated Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She sighed. At that moment the presence of Henriette irritated her. She
+wanted to be alone, leaning to watch this ever-shifting torrent of
+humanity. This balcony belonged to her room. She had revenged herself
+for the upper berth by securing a room much better placed than
+Henriette's. But if Henriette intended to live in it--
+
+Suddenly she drew back rather sharply. She had just seen, in the midst
+of the crowd, the tall figure of Claude Heath moving toward the cafe
+immediately opposite to her balcony.
+
+"Is my tea never coming?" she said. "I think I shall get into a tea-gown
+and lie down a little before dinner."
+
+Madame Sennier followed her into the room.
+
+"Till dinner, then," she said. "We are sure to see them, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course. Leave the libretto entirely to me. He would be certain to
+suspect any move on your part."
+
+Madame Sennier's white face looked very hard as she nodded and left the
+room. She met the waiter bringing Mrs. Shiffney's tea at the door.
+
+When she and the waiter were both gone Mrs. Shiffney drank her tea on
+the balcony, sitting largely on a cane chair. She felt agreeably
+excited. Claude Heath had gone into the cafe on the other side of the
+road, and was now sitting alone at a little table on the terrace which
+projects into the Place beneath the Hotel de Paris. Mrs. Shiffney saw a
+waiter take his order and bring him coffee, while a little Arab,
+kneeling, set to work on his boots.
+
+All day long Claude and Gillier had remained invisible. Mrs. Shiffney,
+Henriette, and Max Elliot, after visiting the native quarters in the
+morning, had expected to see the two men at lunch, but they had not
+appeared. Now the two women had just returned from a drive round the
+city and to the suspension bridge which spans the terror of the Gorge.
+And here was Claude Heath just opposite to Mrs. Shiffney, no doubt
+serenely unconscious of her presence in Constantine! As Mrs. Shiffney
+sipped her tea and looked down at him she thought again, "What a setting
+for melodrama!"
+
+She was a very civilized child of her age, and believed that she had a
+horror of melodrama, looking upon it as a degraded form of art, or
+artlessness, which pleased people whom she occasionally saw but would
+never know. But this evening some part of her almost desired it, not as
+a spectacle, but as something in which she could take an active part. In
+this town she felt adventurous. It was difficult to look at this crowd
+without thinking of violent lives and deeds of violence. It was
+difficult to look at Claude Heath without the desire to pay him back
+here with interest for a certain indifference.
+
+"But I'm not really melodramatic," said Adelaide Shiffney to herself.
+
+She could resent, but she was not a very good hater. She felt generally
+too _affairee_, too civilized to hate. In her heart she rather disliked
+Claude Heath as once she had rather liked him. He had had the
+impertinence and lack of taste to decline her friendship, tacitly, of
+course, but quite definitely. She had never been in love with him. If
+she had been she would have been more definite with him. But he had
+attracted her a good deal; and she always resented even the crossing of
+a whim. Something in his personality and something in his physique had
+appealed to her, a strangeness and height, an imaginativeness and
+remoteness which features and gesture often showed in despite of his
+intention. He was not like everybody. It would have been interesting to
+take him in hand. It had certainly been irritating to make no impression
+upon him. And now he was married and living in a delicious Arab nest
+with that foolish Charmian Mansfield. So Mrs. Shiffney called Charmian
+at that moment. Suddenly she felt rather melancholy and rather cross.
+She wanted to give somebody a slap. She put down her tea-cup, lit a
+cigarette, and drew her chair to the rail of the balcony.
+
+Claude Heath was sipping his coffee. One long-fingered musical hand lay
+on his knee. His soft hat was tilted a little forward over the eyes that
+were watching the crowd. Probably he was thinking about his opera.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was incapable of Henriette's hard and bitter
+determination. Her love was not fastened irrevocably on any man. She
+wished that it was, or thought she did. Such a passion must give a new
+interest to life. Often she fancied she was in love; but the feeling
+passed, and she bemoaned its passing. Henriette was determined to keep a
+clear field for her composer. She was ready to be suspicious, to be
+jealous of every musical shadow. Mrs. Shiffney found herself wishing
+that she had Henriette's incentive as she looked at Claude Heath. She
+could not see his face quite clearly. Perhaps when she did--
+
+That he should have married that silly Charmian Mansfield! Ever since
+then Mrs. Shiffney had resolved to wipe them both off her
+slate--gradually. Charmian had been right in her supposition. But now
+Mrs. Shiffney thought she was perhaps on the edge of something that
+might be more amusing than a mere wiping off the slate.
+
+Of course Claude Heath and Gillier would be at dinner. It would be
+rather fun to see Claude's face when she walked in with Henriette and
+Max Elliot.
+
+She got up and stood by the rail; and now she looked down on Claude with
+intention, willing that he should look up at her. Why should not she
+have the fun of seeing his surprise while she was alone? Why should she
+share with Henriette?
+
+Without turning his eyes in her direction Claude rapped on his table
+with a piece of money, paid a waiter for his coffee, got up, made his
+way out of the cafe, and mingled with the crowd. He did not come toward
+the hotel, but turned up the street leading to the Governor's palace and
+disappeared. Mrs. Shiffney noticed an Arab in a blue jacket and a white
+burnous, who joined him as he left the cafe.
+
+"Local color, I suppose," she murmured to herself. She wished she could
+go off like that in the strange and violent crowd, could be quite
+independent.
+
+"What a curse it is to be a woman!" she thought.
+
+Then she resolved after dinner to go out for a stroll with Claude.
+Henriette should not come. If she, Adelaide Shiffney, were going to work
+for Henriette she must be left to work in her own way. She thought of
+the little intrigue that was on foot, and smiled. Then she looked out
+beyond the Place, over the dusty public gardens and the houses, to the
+far-off, serene, bare mountains. For a moment their calm outlines held
+her eyes. For a moment the clamor of voices from below seemed to die out
+of her ears. Then she shivered, drew back into her room, and felt for
+the knob of the electric light. Darkness was falling, and it was growing
+cold on this rocky height which frowned above the gorge of the Rummel.
+
+Neither Claude Heath nor Gillier appeared at dinner. Their absence was
+discussed by Mrs. Shiffney and her friends, and Mrs. Shiffney told them
+that she had seen Claude Heath that evening in a cafe. After dinner
+Henriette Sennier remarked discontentedly:
+
+"What are we going to do?"
+
+"Max, why don't you get a guide and take Henriette out to see some
+dancing? There is dancing only five minutes from here," said Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+"Well, but you--aren't you coming?"
+
+She had exchanged a glance with Henriette.
+
+"I must write some letters. If I'm not too long over them perhaps I'll
+follow you. I can't miss you. All the dancing is in the same street."
+
+"But I don't think there are any dancing women here."
+
+"The Kabyle boys dance. Go to see them, and I'll probably follow you."
+
+As soon as they were gone Mrs. Shiffney put on a fur coat, summoned an
+Arab called Amor, who had already spoken to her at the door of the
+hotel, and said to him:
+
+"You know the tall Englishman who is staying here?"
+
+"The one who takes Aloui as guide?"
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know. But he is fond of music; he--"
+
+"It is Aloui's Englishman," interrupted Amor, calmly.
+
+"Where does he go at night? He's a friend of mine. I should like to meet
+him."
+
+"He might be with Said Hitani."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"If madame does not mind a little walk--"
+
+"Take me there. Is it far?"
+
+"It is on the edge of the town, close to the wall. When Said Hitani
+plays he likes to go there. He is growing old. He does not want to play
+where everybody can hear. Madame has a family in England?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney satisfied Amor's curiosity as they walked through the
+crowded streets till they came to the outskirts of the city. The stars
+were out, but there was no moon. The road ran by the city wall. Far down
+below, in the arms of the darkness, lay the gorge, from which rose
+faintly the sound of water; lay the immense stretches of yellow-brown
+and red-brown country darkened here and there with splashes of green;
+the dim plantations, the cascades which fall to the valley of Sidi
+Imcin; the long roads, like flung-out ribands, winding into the great
+distances which suggest eternal things. From the darkness, as from the
+mouth of a mighty cavern, rose a wind, not strong, very pure, very keen,
+which seemed dashed with the spray of water. Now and then an Arab
+passed muffled in burnous and hood, a fold of linen held to his mouth.
+The noise of the city was hushed.
+
+Presently Amor stood still.
+
+"_Voila_ Said Hitani!"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney heard in the distance a sound of music. Several
+instruments combined to make it, but the voice of a flute was dominant
+among them. Light, sweet, delicate, it came to her in the night like a
+personality full of odd magic, full of small and subtle surprises,
+intricate, gay, and sad.
+
+"Said Hitani!" she said. "He's delicious! Take me to him, Amor."
+
+She knew at once that he was the flute-player.
+
+They walked on, and soon came to a patch of light on the empty road.
+This was shed by the lamps of the cafe from which the music issued.
+Under the two windows, which were protected by wire and by iron bars,
+five Arabs were squatting, immersed in a sea of garments in which their
+figures and even their features were lost. Only their black eyes looked
+out, gazing steadily into the darkness. A big man, with bare legs and a
+spotted turban, came to the door of the cafe to invite them to go in;
+but Mrs. Shiffney refused by a gesture.
+
+"In a minute!" she said to Amor.
+
+Amor spoke in Arabic to the attendant, who at once returned to the
+coffee niche. Within the music never ceased, and now singing voices
+alternated with the instruments. Mrs. Shiffney kept away from the door
+and looked into the room through the window space next to it.
+
+She saw a long and rather narrow chamber, with a paved floor, strewn
+with clean straw mats, blue-green walls, and an orange-colored ceiling.
+Close to the door was the coffee niche. At the opposite end of the room
+five musicians were squatting, four in a semicircle facing the coffee
+niche, the fifth alone, almost facing them. This fifth was Said Hitani,
+the famous flute-player of Constantine--a man at this time sixty-three
+years old. In front of him was a flat board, on which lay two freshly
+rolled cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his
+flute from his lips, replaced it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a
+moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a
+virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his
+companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its
+end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large
+guitar; the third a derbouka; and the fourth a tarah, or native
+tambourine, ornamented with ten little discs of brass, which made a soft
+clashing sound when shaken. On the left of the room, down one side,
+squatted a row of Arabs with coffee-cups and cigarettes. By the door two
+more were playing a game of draughts. And opposite to the windows, on an
+Oriental rug, the long figure of Claude Heath was stretched out. He lay
+with his hat tilted to the left over one temple, his cheek on his left
+hand, listening intently to the music. On a wooden board beside him was
+some music paper, and now and then with a stylograph he jotted down some
+notes. He looked both emotional and thoughtful. Often his imaginative
+eyes rested on the small and hunched-up figure of Said Hitani, dressed
+in white, black, and gold, with a hood drawn over the head. Now and then
+he looked toward the window, and it seemed to Mrs. Shiffney then that
+his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing, except perhaps some Eastern
+vision summoned up by his lit imagination.
+
+The music very gradually quickened and grew louder, became steadily more
+masculine, powerful, and fierce, till it sounded violent. The volume of
+tone produced by the players astonished Mrs. Shiffney. The wild vagaries
+of the flute seemed presently to be taking place in her brain. She drew
+close to the window, put her hands on the bars. At her feet the
+crouching Arabs never stirred. Behind her the cold wind came up from the
+gorge and the great open country with the sound of the rushing water.
+
+At that moment she had the thing that she believed she lived for--a
+really keen sensation.
+
+Suddenly, when the music had become almost intolerably exciting, when
+the players seemed possessed, and noise and swiftness to rush together
+like foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried
+out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the
+derbouka the brown fingers of the player pattered with abrupt
+feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and
+fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height,
+and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the musicians
+began to smoke.
+
+[Illustration: "AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS NEVER STIRRED"--_Page
+258_]
+
+"Now I'll go in!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Amor.
+
+He led the way and she followed. Claude glanced up, stared for a moment,
+then sprang up.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney!"
+
+His voice was almost stern.
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney!" he repeated.
+
+"Come to hear your music, for I know they are all playing only for you
+and the opera."
+
+Her strong, almost masculine hand lingered in his, and how could he let
+it go without impoliteness?
+
+"Aren't they?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"It's wonderful the way they play. Said Hitani is an artist."
+
+"You know his name?"
+
+"And I must know him. May I stay a little?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+He looked round for a seat.
+
+"No, the rug!" she said.
+
+And, despite her bulk, she sank down with a swift ease that was almost
+Oriental.
+
+"Now please introduce me to Said Hitani!"
+
+Till late in the night she stayed between the blue-green walls,
+listening to the vehement voices and to the instruments, following all
+the strange journeys of Said Hitani's flute. She was genuinely
+fascinated, and this fact made her fascinating. As she had caught at Max
+Elliot that day when he asked her, against his intention, to meet Claude
+Heath, so now she caught at Claude Heath himself. She had come to the
+cafe with a purpose, and, as she forgot it, she carried it out. Never
+before had Claude understood completely why she had gained her position
+in London and Paris, realized fully her fascination. Her delightful
+naturalness, her pleasure, her almost boyish gaiety, her simplicity, her
+humor took him captive for the moment. She explained that she had left
+her companions and stolen away to enjoy Constantine alone.
+
+"And now I'm interrupting you. But you must forgive me just for this one
+night!"
+
+Through Amor, who acted as interpreter, she carried on a lively
+intercourse with Said Hitani. The other musicians smiled, but seldom
+spoke, and only among themselves. But Said Hitani, the great artist of
+his native city, a man famous far and wide among the Arabs, was
+infinitely diverting and descriptive in talk even as when he gave
+himself to the flute. With an animation that was youthful he described
+the meaning of each new song. He had two flutes on which he played
+alternately--"Mousou et Madame," he called them. And he knew, so he
+declared, over a hundred songs. Mrs. Shiffney, speaking to him always
+through Amor, told him of London, and what a sensation he and his
+companions would make there in the _decor_ of a Moorish cafe. Said
+Hitani pulled his little gray beard with his delicate hands, swayed to
+and fro, and smiled. Then sharply he uttered a torrent of words which
+seemed almost to fight their way out of some chamber in his narrow
+throat.
+
+"Said Hitani says you have only to send money and the address and they
+are all coming whenever you like. They are very pleased to come."
+
+At this point one of the musicians, a fair man with pale eyes who played
+the tarah, interposed a remark which was uttered with great seriousness.
+
+"Can they go to London on camels, he wishes to know," observed Amor
+gently.
+
+Said Hitani waited for Mrs. Shiffney's answer with a slightly judicial
+air, moving his head as if in approval of the tarah-player's
+forethought.
+
+"I'm afraid they can't."
+
+The tarah-player spoke again.
+
+"He says, can they go on donkeys?"
+
+"No. It is further than Paris, tell him."
+
+"Then they must go on the sea. Paris is across the sea."
+
+"Yes, they will have to take a steamer."
+
+At this juncture it was found that the tarah-player would not be of the
+party.
+
+"He says he would be very sick, and no man can play when he is sick."
+
+"What will Madame pay?" interposed Said Hitani.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney declared seriously that she would think it over, make a
+calculation, and Amor should convey her decision as to price to him on
+the morrow.
+
+All seemed well satisfied with this. And the tarah-player remarked,
+after a slight pause, that he would wait to know about the price before
+he decided whether he would be too sick to play in London. Then, at a
+signal from Said Hitani, they all took up their instruments and played
+and sang a garden song called _Mabouf_, describing how a Sheik and his
+best loved wife walked in a great garden and sang one against the other.
+
+"It has been quite delicious!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude, when at
+last the song _Au Revoir_, tumultuously brilliant with a tremendous
+crescendo at the close, had been played, and with many salaams and good
+wishes the musicians had departed.
+
+"I love their playing," Claude answered. "But really you shouldn't have
+paid them. I have arranged with Hitani to come every evening."
+
+"Oh, but I paid them for wanting to know whether they could go to London
+on camels. What a success your opera ought to be if you have got a fine
+libretto."
+
+They were just leaving the cafe.
+
+"Do let us stand by the wall for a minute," she added. "By that tree. It
+is so wonderful here."
+
+Claude's guide, Aloui, had come to accompany him home, and was behind
+with Amor. They stayed in the doorway of the cafe. Mrs. Shiffney and
+Claude leaned on the wall, looking down into the vast void from which
+rose the cool wind and the sound of water.
+
+"What would I give to be a creative artist!" she said. "That must add so
+much meaning to all this. Do you know how fortunate you are? Do you know
+you possess the earth?"
+
+The sable sleeve of her coat touched Claude's arm and hand. Her deep
+voice sounded warm and full of genuine feeling. A short time ago, when
+she had come into the cafe, he had been both astonished and vexed to see
+her. Now he knew that he had enjoyed this evening more than any other
+evening that he had spent in Constantine.
+
+"But there are plenty of drawbacks," he said.
+
+"Oh, no, not real ones! After this evening--well, I shall wish for your
+success. Till now I didn't care in the least. Indeed, I believe I hoped
+you never would have a great success."
+
+She moved slightly nearer to him.
+
+"Did you?" he said.
+
+"Yes. You've always been so horrid to me, when I always wanted to be
+nice to you."
+
+"Oh, but--"
+
+"Don't let us talk about it. What does it matter now? I thought I might
+have done something for you once, have helped you on a little, perhaps.
+But now you are married and settled and will make your own way. I feel
+it. You don't want anyone's help. You've come away from us all, and how
+right you've been. And Charmian's done the right thing, too, giving up
+all our nonsense for your work. Sacrifice means success. You are bound
+to have it. I feel you are going to. Ah, you don't know how I sometimes
+long to be linked, really linked, to the striving, the abnegation, the
+patience, the triumph of a man of genius! People envy my silly little
+position, as they call it. And what is it worth? And yet I do know, I
+have an instinct, a flair, for the real thing. I'm ignorant. I can dare
+to acknowledge it to you. But I can tell what is good and bad, and
+sometimes even why a thing is good. I'm led away, of course. In a silly
+social life like mine everybody is led away. We can't help it. But I
+could have been worth something in the art life of a big man, if I'd
+loved him."
+
+How soft sable is against a hand!
+
+"I'm sure you could," Claude said.
+
+"And as it is--"
+
+She stopped speaking abruptly. Then with a marked change of voice she
+said:
+
+"Oh, do forgive me for committing the unpardonable sin--babbling about
+myself! You're the only person I have ever--Forget all about it, won't
+you? I don't know why I did it. It was the music, I suppose, and the
+strangeness of this place, and thinking of your work and your hopes for
+the future. It made me wish I had some too, either for myself or
+for--for someone like you."
+
+As if irresistibly governed by feeling her voice had again changed,
+become once more warm as with emotion. But now she drew herself up a
+little and laughed.
+
+"Don't be afraid! It's over! But you have had a glimpse no one else has
+ever had, and I know you'll keep it to yourself. Let's talk of something
+else--anything. Tell me something about your libretto, if you care to."
+
+As they walked slowly toward the heart of the city, followed by the two
+Arabs, she took Claude's arm, very naturally, as if half for protection,
+half because it was dark and false steps were possible.
+
+And he told her a good deal, finally a great deal, about the libretto.
+
+"It sounds wonderful!" she said. "I'm so glad! But may I give you a
+little bit of advice?"
+
+"Yes, do."
+
+"Don't say anything about it to Henriette--Madame Sennier."
+
+"No. But--"
+
+"Why not? I scarcely know. My instinct! Don't!"
+
+"I won't," Claude said.
+
+"I'd give anything to read it. But if I were you I wouldn't let anyone
+read it. As you probably know, I'm in half the secrets of the artistic
+world, and always have been. But there isn't one woman in a hundred who
+can be trusted to hold her tongue. Is this the hotel? Good-night. Yes,
+isn't it a delicious coat? _Bonne nuit_, Amor! _A demain!_"
+
+A minute later Mrs. Shiffney tapped at Henriette's door, which was
+immediately opened.
+
+"It is all right," she whispered. "I shall have the libretto
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Two days later Mrs. Shiffney slipped Gillier's libretto surreptitiously
+into Claude's hand.
+
+"It's splendid!" she almost whispered. "With such a libretto you can't
+fail."
+
+They were in the deserted salon of the hotel, among armchairs, albums
+and old French picture-papers. Mrs. Shiffney looked toward the door.
+
+"Don't let anyone know I've read it--especially Henriette. She's a dear
+and a great friend of mine, but, all the same, she'd be horribly
+jealous. There's only one thing about the libretto that frightens me."
+
+"What is it? Do tell me!"
+
+"Having so many Easterns in it. If by any chance you should ever want to
+produce your opera--" She hesitated, with her eyes fixed upon him. "In
+America, I fancy--no, I think I'm being absurd."
+
+"But what do you mean? Do tell me! Not that there's the slightest chance
+yet of my opera ever being done anywhere."
+
+"Well, it's only that Americans do so hate what they call color."
+
+"Oh, but that is only in negroes!"
+
+"Is it? Then I'm talking nonsense! I'm so glad! Not a word to Henriette!
+Hush! Here she is!"
+
+At that moment the door opened and the white face of Madame Sennier
+looked in.
+
+"What are you two doing here? Where is Max?"
+
+"Gone to arrange about the sleeping-car."
+
+Claude slipped the libretto into the pocket of his jacket. In London he
+had been rather inclined to like Madame Sennier. In Constantine he felt
+ill at ease with her. He detected the secret hostility which she
+scarcely troubled to conceal, though she covered it with an air of
+careless indifference. Now and then a corner of the covering slipped
+down, leaving a surface exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day
+at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling
+which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude
+had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit. She had rescued him from his solitude
+with Gillier--a solitude which he had endured for the sake of the opera,
+but which had been odious to him. She had warmed him by her apparent
+enthusiasm, by her sympathy. He had been obliged to acknowledge that she
+was very forgiving. He had certainly not been "nice" to her in London.
+Her simplicity in telling him she had felt his conduct, her sweetness in
+being so ready to forget it, to enter into his expectations, to wish him
+well, had fascinated him, roused his chivalry. But most of all had her
+few words by the wall after Said Hitani's music touched him, been
+instrumental in bringing him nearer to her.
+
+"She showed me a bit of her real self," he thought. "And she was not
+sorry afterward that she had shown it to me."
+
+He had made her a return for this, the return which she had wanted; but
+to Claude it seemed no return at all.
+
+"You are really going away to-night?" he said now. And there was a note
+of regret in his voice which was not missed by her.
+
+"I can't possibly leave Jacques alone any longer," said Madame Sennier.
+"And what have we to do here? We aren't getting local color for an
+opera."
+
+"No, no; of course, you want to get away!" said Claude quickly, and
+stiffening with constraint.
+
+"I should love to stay on. This place fascinates me by its strangeness,
+its marvellous position," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She looked at Claude.
+
+"But I suppose we must go back. Will you take me for a last walk before
+tea?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+Madame Sennier passed the tip of her tongue across her scarlet lips.
+
+"Over the bridge and up into the pine-wood?"
+
+"Wherever you like."
+
+At this moment Armand Gillier walked brusquely into the room. Mrs.
+Shiffney turned to Henriette.
+
+"We'll leave Monsieur Gillier to take care of you."
+
+Henriette's lips tightened. Gillier said:
+
+"_Bien_, madame!"
+
+As Mrs. Shiffney and Claude left the room Gillier bowed with very formal
+politeness. The door shut. After a pause Gillier said:
+
+"You go away to-night, madame?"
+
+Madame Sennier sat down on a settee by a round table on which lay
+several copies of _L'Illustration_, in glazed black covers, _La Depeche
+Algerienne_, and a guide to Constantine.
+
+She had been awake most of the previous night, with jealous care
+studying the libretto Gillier had sold to Claude, which had been put
+into her hands by Mrs. Shiffney. At once she had recognized its unusual
+merit. She had in a high degree the faculty, possessed by many clever
+Frenchwomen, of detecting and appraising the value of a work of art. She
+was furious because Gillier's libretto had never been submitted to her
+husband; but she could not say all that was in her mind. She and
+Adelaide Shiffney had been frank with each other in the matter, and she
+had no intention of making any mistake because she was angry.
+
+"We haven't much time to spare. Jacques has to get on with his new
+opera."
+
+Gillier sat down on a chair with a certain cold and reluctant but
+definite politeness. His look and manner said: "I cannot, of course,
+leave this lady whom I hate."
+
+"He is a great man now. I congratulate you on his success."
+
+"Jacques was always a great man, but he didn't quite understand it."
+
+"You enlightened him, madame."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"That was very clever of you."
+
+"It wasn't stupid. But I don't happen to be a stupid woman." Her yellow
+eyes narrowed.
+
+"I know how to detect quality. And I suppose you do?"
+
+"Why, madame?"
+
+"You tried to sell libretti to my husband before he was famous."
+
+"And failed."
+
+"Yes. But now I'm glad to know you have succeeded with another man who
+is not famous yet."
+
+Gillier laid his right hand down on one of the glazed black covers of
+_L'Illustration_.
+
+"You do not believe in my talent, madame. I cannot understand why you
+should be interested in such a matter."
+
+"You make the mistake of supposing that a talented man can never be
+immature. What you offered to my husband was immature; but I always knew
+you had talent."
+
+"Indeed? You never told me so that I remember."
+
+"You appeared to be fully aware of it."
+
+Gillier made a fist of his hand on the cover. He wished Jacques Sennier
+were setting the libretto he had sold to Claude Heath, and Madame
+Sennier wished exactly the same thing. He did not know her thought; but
+she divined his. With all her soul, greedy for her Jacques and for
+herself, she coveted that libretto. She almost hated Claude Heath for
+possessing it. And now, as she sat opposite to Gillier, with the round
+table between them, always alert for intrigue, she began to wonder
+whether in truth the libretto was irrevocably lost to them.
+
+"Weren't you?" she said, fixing her unflinching eyes upon him.
+
+"I knew I was not quite such a fool as your husband certainly thought
+me."
+
+"Jacques is a mere baby outside of his art."
+
+"_Si?_"
+
+"That is why I have to think for him very often. Which of the libretti
+has Mr. Heath bought?"
+
+"It is not one of those I had the honor of showing to Monsieur Sennier."
+
+"Really? You have written another specially for Mr. Heath?"
+
+"I wrote another to please myself. His wife saw it and took it to him.
+He was so foolish as to think it good enough to buy."
+
+"Let us hope his music will be good enough to produce on the stage."
+
+Gillier looked very sharply at her, and began to tug at his moustache;
+but he said nothing. After a moment Madame Sennier said, with a change
+of tone and manner that seemed to indicate an intention to be more
+friendly:
+
+"When you write another libretto, why not let me see it?"
+
+"You desire to inflict a fourth rejection upon me, madame?"
+
+"If you like, I'll tell you the only thing I desire," she replied, with
+a sort of brutal frankness well calculated to appeal to his rough
+character. "It has nothing to do with you. I haven't your interests at
+my heart. Why should I bother about them? All I want is to get something
+fine for my husband when a chance arises. I know what's good better than
+you do, my friend. You showed me three libretti that didn't do. Show me
+one that does do, and I'll pay you a price that will astonish you."
+
+Gillier's large eyes shone.
+
+"How much would you pay?"
+
+"Show me a fine libretto!"
+
+"Tell me how much you'd pay."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Five times as much as anyone else offered you. But you would have to
+prove the offer to my satisfaction."
+
+Gillier fidgeted on his chair, took hold of the _Depeche Algerienne_,
+and began carefully to fold it into pleats.
+
+"I should want a royalty," he said, keeping his shining eyes on her.
+
+"If I were satisfied I would see that you got it."
+
+There was a long silence, during which they looked at each other.
+
+Gillier was puzzled. He did not believe Claude Heath had shown the
+libretto to her. Yet she was surely prompted now by some very definite
+purpose. He could not guess what it was. At last he looked down at the
+paper he was folding mechanically.
+
+"I haven't got anything to sell at present," he almost growled, in a
+very low voice.
+
+"That's a pity. We must hope for the future. There is no reason why you
+and I should be mortal enemies since you haven't had a chance to murder
+my poor old cabbage."
+
+"He's a coward," said Gillier.
+
+"Of course he is. And I'm very thankful for it. Cowards live long."
+
+She got up from the settee. Gillier, returning to his varnish, sprang
+up, dropping the paper, and opened the door.
+
+"Don't forget what I said," she remarked as she went out. "Five times
+the price anyone else offers, on account of a royalty to be fixed by
+mutual agreement. But it would have to be a libretto _numero un_."
+
+He looked at her but did not say a word.
+
+When she was gone he sat down again by the round table and stared at the
+cloth, with his head bent and his muscular, large-boned arms laid one
+upon the other.
+
+And presently he swore under his breath.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney and Claude were making their way through the
+crowded and noisy street toward the unfinished Suspension Bridge which
+spans the gorge, linking the city to the height which is crowned by the
+great hospital. Beyond the hospital, opposite to the Grand Rocher, a
+terrific precipice of rock beneath which a cascade leaps down to the
+valley where lie the baths of Sidi Imcin, is a wood of fir-trees
+commanding an immense view. This was the objective of their walk. The
+sun shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage
+height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for
+destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were
+carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like
+the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men
+among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that
+stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and
+slippery pavements that wind between the mauve and the pale yellow house
+fronts, came incessant cries and the long and dull murmur of voices.
+Bellebelles were singing everywhere in their tiny cages, heedless of
+their captivity. On tiny wooden tables and stands before the insouciant
+workers at trades, and the indifferent sellers of goods, were set vases
+of pale yellow jonquils. Round the minarets fluttered the pigeons. And
+again, floating across the terrific gorge, came the brave notes of the
+military clarions.
+
+"There is something here which I have never felt in any other place,"
+said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to
+cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the
+water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city,
+is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known
+you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting
+life is!"
+
+She did not always think so, but at this moment she really found life
+interesting.
+
+"I shall never forget this little time!" she added. "I haven't enjoyed
+myself so much for years. And now it's nearly over. What a bore!"
+
+Claude felt exhilarated too. The day was so bright, so alive, seemed
+full of wildness and gaiety and lusty freedom.
+
+"Let us enjoy what is left!" he said.
+
+She stole a side glance at him as he swung along by her. How would it be
+to be married to a man like him--a man with his way to make?
+
+They came down to the bridge, escaping from the bustle of the city. From
+the fir woods the clarions sounded louder, calling to each other like
+bold and triumphant voices.
+
+"Have you got those in your opera?" she asked him.
+
+"I shall have them."
+
+"Of course."
+
+They talked a little about the libretto as they crossed the bridge, with
+the sound of the water in their ears.
+
+"It is good to be out of the city!" Claude said, as they came to the
+rubble of the unfinished track on the farther side, where Arabs worked
+under the supervision of a French overseer. "I did not know you were a
+walker."
+
+"I don't think you knew very much about me."
+
+"That's quite true. Where do you wish to go?"
+
+"Anywhere--to the left. Let us sit on a rock under the trees and look at
+the view."
+
+"Can you get up here?"
+
+"If you give me your hand."
+
+They walked a little way in the shadow of the fir-trees, leaving the
+hospital on their right. The plantation was almost deserted. The
+soldiers were evidently retiring, for the clarions sounded more distant
+now. Here and there the figure of an Arab was visible sauntering slowly
+among the trees, with the smoke of his cigarette dispersing above him.
+Some young Jews went by, holding hands, laughing and talking. They sent
+glances of hard inquiry at Mrs. Shiffney's broad figure from their too
+intelligent eyes. Soon their thin forms vanished among the gray trunks.
+
+"Shall we sit there?" asked Claude.
+
+"Yes; just in the sun."
+
+"Oh, but you wanted--"
+
+"No, let us sit in the sun."
+
+She opened her green parasol.
+
+Almost at the edge of the cliff, which descended steeply to the high
+road to Philippeville, was a flat ledge of rock warmed by the sunbeams.
+
+"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"
+
+They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale
+yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot,
+the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.
+
+"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude,
+clasping his hands round his knees.
+
+"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London
+husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
+suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"
+
+"I think I did."
+
+"Don't you ever regret that little house?"
+
+She saw his eyebrows move downward.
+
+"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."
+
+"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
+seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."
+
+"Was there?"
+
+"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
+that without ever hearing your music? I did."
+
+"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"
+
+"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
+evasiveness.
+
+Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
+view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
+too well, perhaps.
+
+"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
+But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
+particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
+unlike anyone else's."
+
+"I certainly got to love my little house."
+
+"Because it was doing things for you."
+
+Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
+As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in
+answer to his gaze.
+
+"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.
+
+"But--forgive me--how can you know?"
+
+"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
+directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I
+daresay--follow my lead."
+
+"Well, but--"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"I think I'd better not."
+
+"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
+
+"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
+of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
+hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
+
+"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
+blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.
+
+Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.
+
+"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.
+
+Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had
+come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.
+
+"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.
+
+He did not mean to speak coldly; but directly he had said the words he
+knew that his voice had become frigid.
+
+"What a stupid ass I am!" was his comment on himself. But how to be
+different?
+
+Mrs. Shiffney was looking very grave. Her drawn-down brows, her powerful
+lips suggested to him at this moment suffering. In London he had thought
+of her as a typical pleasure-seeking woman, greedy of sensation,
+reckless in the chase after it. And he had disliked, almost feared her,
+despite her careless charm. Now he felt differently about her. He had
+come to that point in a man's acquaintance with a woman when he says to
+himself, "I never understood her properly." He seemed to himself a
+brute. Yet what had he done?
+
+She did not speak for several minutes. He wanted to speak, to break a
+silence which, to him, was painful; but he could think of nothing to
+say. He felt oddly moved, yet he could not have said why, perhaps even
+to himself. Keeping his hands clasped round his knees, he looked out
+beyond the gorge over the open country. Far down, at the foot of the
+cascades, he saw in a hollow, the clustering trees about the baths of
+Sidi Imcin. Along the reddish bareness of the hill showed the white
+blossoms of some fruit-trees, almost like a white dust flung up against
+the tawny breast of the earth. The water made a hoarse noise in the
+hidden depths of the gorge, lifted its voice into a roar as it leaped
+down into the valley, murmured like the voice of a happy dreamer where
+it slipped by among the trees. And Claude, as he sat in silence,
+believed that he heard clearly the threefold utterance, subtly combined,
+and, like some strange trinity, striving to tell him truths of life.
+
+His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops,
+beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open
+country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming
+in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes,
+dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for
+hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests
+seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or
+perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must
+exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only
+that something experienced made life truly life.
+
+For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his
+companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for
+women rather than a woman.
+
+During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires
+connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had
+come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her
+mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at
+this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different
+she might well have been on his side. Even now--
+
+Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she
+deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it
+matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as
+marriage got to do with it?
+
+Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that
+firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive
+loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it.
+
+He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the
+minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of
+it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not.
+All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he
+understood her desire and was recoiling from it.
+
+Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed
+every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face,
+transforming it.
+
+"Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think
+you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?"
+
+As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her
+tailor-made skirt.
+
+Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement.
+
+"Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to
+seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was
+unknown by her at this moment.
+
+"And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there."
+
+She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward
+the bridge.
+
+"You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation."
+
+Claude said nothing, and she continued:
+
+"I always think one of the signs of greatness in an artist is his
+knowledge of what environment, what way of life, is necessary to his
+talent. No one can know that for him. Every really great artist is as
+inflexible as the Grand Rocher."
+
+She pointed with her right hand toward the precipice.
+
+"That is why women always love and hate him."
+
+Her eyes and her voice lightly mocked him. She turned her head and
+looked at him, smiling:
+
+"I am sure Charmian knows that."
+
+Claude reddened to the roots of his hair and felt suddenly abased.
+
+"There are very few great artists in the world," he said.
+
+"And, so, very few inflexible men?"
+
+"I have never--"
+
+He pulled himself up.
+
+"Yes?" she said encouragingly.
+
+"I was only going to say," he said, speaking now doggedly, "that I have
+never laid claim to anything--anything in the way of talent. It isn't
+quite fair, is it, to assume that I consider myself a man of talent or
+an important person when I don't?"
+
+"Do you really mean to tell me that you don't think yourself a man of
+talent?"
+
+"I am entirely unknown."
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, of course, but--but perhaps it is only when he has something
+to offer, and has offered it, that a man knows what is his value."
+
+"In that case you will know when you have produced your opera."
+
+Claude looked down.
+
+"All my good wishes and my prayers will go with you from now till its
+production," she continued, always lightly. "I have a right to be
+specially interested since that evening with Said Hitani. And then I
+have been privileged. I have read the libretto."
+
+As she spoke Claude was conscious of uneasiness. He thought of Charmian,
+of Mrs. Shiffney, of the libretto. Had he not been carried away by
+events, by atmosphere, perhaps, and by the influence of music, which
+always had upon him such a dangerously powerful effect? He remembered
+the night when he had written his decisive letter to Charmian. Music had
+guided him then. Had it not guided him again in Constantine? Was it
+angel or demon in his life?
+
+"Help me down, please. It's a little difficult here."
+
+He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing.
+
+They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities,
+into the perpetual uproar of the city.
+
+By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers.
+Claude went down to the station to see them off.
+
+On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in
+his hand.
+
+Just as the train was about to start he presented it to Madame Sennier.
+
+From the window of the _wagon-lit_ Mrs. Shiffney looked at the two men
+standing together as the train drew away from the platform.
+
+Then she nodded and waved her hand.
+
+There was a mocking smile on her face.
+
+When the station was hidden she leaned back, turning toward Henriette.
+
+"Claude Heath is a fool!" she said. "I wonder when he will begin to
+suspect it?"
+
+"Men have to take their time over things like that," remarked Henriette.
+"What hideous flowers these are! I think I shall throw them out of the
+window."
+
+"No, don't!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They are a symbol of your reconciliation with Armand Gillier."
+
+"He isn't altogether a fool, I fancy," remarked Henriette, laying
+Gillier's bouquet down on the seat beside her. "But we shall see."
+
+"Oh, Max! Yes, come in and sit with us!"
+
+The faces of the two women changed as Max Elliot joined them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+After their return from Constantine Mrs. Shiffney and her party only
+stayed two nights at Mustapha. Then they descended to the harbor and
+went on board _The Wanderer_, which weighed anchor and set sail for
+Monte Carlo. Before leaving they paid a visit to Djenan-el-Maqui to say
+adieu to Charmian.
+
+The day was unusually hot for the time of year, and both Mrs. Shiffney
+and Madame Sennier were shrouded in white veils with patterns. These,
+the latest things from Paris, were almost like masks. Little of the
+faces beneath them could be seen. But no doubt they preserved
+complexions from the destructive influence of the sun.
+
+Jacques Sennier had told his friends and his wife the story of his days
+of desertion. A name summed it up, Djenan-el-Maqui. With the utmost
+vivacity, however, he had described all he had eaten, drunk, smoked, and
+done in that hospitable house and garden; the impression he had made
+upon the occupants and had received from them.
+
+"I am beloved by all!" he had cried, with enthusiasm. "They would die
+for me. As for the good Pierre, each night he led me home as if I were
+his own child!"
+
+"We must certainly go and thank them," said Mrs. Shiffney, laughing.
+
+The visit was not without intensities.
+
+"We've come to say 'Good-bye,'" said Mrs. Shiffney, when they came into
+the "harem," as she persisted in calling the drawing-room. "We are just
+back from our little run, and now we must be off to Monte Carlo. By the
+way, we came across your husband in Constantine."
+
+"I know. He wrote to me all about it," said Charmian.
+
+Claude had really written a very short note, ending with the maddening
+phrase, "all news when we meet." She was burning with curiosity, was
+tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw
+the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the
+two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless in the open.
+
+"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
+Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
+there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
+with our affairs."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
+delightful time."
+
+"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
+the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"--he
+flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
+evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"
+
+He blew a kiss.
+
+"Shall I forget them? Never!"
+
+Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.
+
+"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
+spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.
+
+The composer seized his arm.
+
+"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
+the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
+come!"
+
+He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
+like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
+him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
+women were left alone.
+
+"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
+There's a little breeze from the sea."
+
+"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
+
+When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
+murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
+if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
+Constantine.
+
+"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
+extraordinary."
+
+And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
+Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
+before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
+death by their Arab husbands.
+
+"_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
+hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
+twisting fingers.
+
+"_Les Arabes sont des monstres._"
+
+As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
+interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
+
+"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
+
+She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its
+African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
+read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
+instinctive disgust.
+
+The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_"
+
+"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
+eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
+parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
+antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
+really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
+they are picturesque."
+
+"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
+call color drives them quite mad!"
+
+"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.
+
+"It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._"
+
+"Tst! Tst! Tst!"
+
+The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Tst! Tst!"
+
+They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
+and of native music.
+
+"I must go! I must hear, see!"
+
+The composer cried out.
+
+"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"
+
+There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
+from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.
+
+"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.
+
+She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.
+
+"How hot it is!"
+
+Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
+syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.
+
+"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
+the syrups. "I wonder--" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
+my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.
+
+Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
+kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
+ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
+declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
+a negative.
+
+"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
+and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
+husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."
+
+"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
+said Charmian, in a constrained voice.
+
+"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+Was she smiling behind the veil?
+
+"You ought to go to America," said Madame Sennier. "Nobody knows what
+real life is who has not seen New York in the season. Paris, London,
+they are sleepy villages in comparison with New York."
+
+"I should like to see it," replied Charmian. "But we have nothing to
+take us there, no reason to go."
+
+She laughed and added:
+
+"And Claude and I are not millionaires."
+
+Madame Sennier talked for two or three minutes of the great expense of
+living in a smart New York hotel, and then said:
+
+"But some day you will surely go."
+
+"There doesn't seem any prospect of it," said Charmian.
+
+"D'you remember meeting a funny little man called Crayford in my house
+one night, an impresario?" said Mrs. Shiffney, moving her shoulders, and
+pulling at one of her long gloves, as if she were bored and must find
+some occupation.
+
+"Yes, I believe I do--a man with a tiny beard."
+
+"Like a little inquiring goat's! D'you know that he's searching the
+world to find some composer to run against Jacques? Isn't it so,
+Henriette?"
+
+"So they say in New York," said Madame Sennier. "I wish he could find
+one; then perhaps he would leave off bothering us with absurd proposals.
+And I'm sure there is plenty of room for some more shining lights. I
+told Crayford if he worried Jacques any more I would unearth someone for
+him. He doesn't know where to look."
+
+"But surely--" began Charmian.
+
+"Why do you think that?" asked Mrs. Shiffney, in an uninterested voice.
+
+Her brilliant eyes looked extraordinary, like some strange exotic bird's
+eyes, through her veil.
+
+"Because he began his search with England," said Madame Sennier.
+
+"Well, really--Henriette!" observed Mrs. Shiffney, with a faint laugh.
+
+"Ought I to apologize?" said Madame Sennier, turning to Charmian. "When
+art is in question I believe in speaking the plain truth. Oh, I know
+your husband is by way of writing an opera! But, of course, one sees
+that--well, you are here in this delicious little house, having what the
+Americans call a lovely time, enjoying North Africa, listening to the
+fountain, walking, as my old baby says, among passion-flowers, and
+playing about with that joke from the Quartier Latin, Armand Gillier.
+_Mais, ma chere, ce n'est pas serieux!_ One has only to look at your
+interesting husband, to see him in the African _milieu_, to see that.
+And, of course, one realizes at once that you see through it all! A
+pretty game! If one is well off one can afford it. Jacques and I
+starved; but it was quite right that we should. The English talent is
+not for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service, the oratorio in one
+form or another, in fact the thing with a sacred basis, that is where
+the English strength lies. It is in the blood. But opera!" Her shoulders
+went up. "Ah, here they come! Jacques, my cabbage, you are to be petted
+for the last time! Here are your syrups."
+
+Jacques Sennier came, almost running.
+
+"Did they ever nearly starve?" Charmian asked Mrs. Shiffney, when for a
+moment the attention of all the others was distracted from her by some
+wild joke of the composer's.
+
+"Henriette thinks so, I believe. Perhaps that is why Jacques is eating
+all your biscuits now."
+
+When the moment of parting came Jaques Sennier was almost in tears. He
+insisted on going into the kitchen to say farewell to "la grande
+Jeanne." He took Pierre in his arms, solemnly blessed Caroline, and
+warmly pressed his lips to Charmian's hands as he held them, squeezed
+one on the top of the other, in both his own.
+
+"I shall dedicate my new opera to you and to your syrups!" he exclaimed.
+"To the greengage, ah, and the passion-flowers! Max, you old person,
+have you seen them, or have you not? The wonderful Washington was not
+more truthful than I."
+
+His eyes twinkled.
+
+"Were it not that I am a physical coward, I would not go even now. But
+to die because a man who cannot write has practised on soda-water
+bottles! I fly before Armand Gillier. But, madame, I fear your
+respectable husband is even more cowardly than I!"
+
+"Why?" said Charmian, at length releasing her hands from his Simian
+grasp.
+
+"He accepted a libretto!"
+
+When they were gone Charmian was suddenly overcome by a sense of
+profound depression such as she had never felt before. With them seemed
+to go a world; and it was a world that some part of her loved and longed
+for. Sennier stood for fame, for success; his wife for the glory of the
+woman who aids and is crowned; Mrs. Shiffney and Max Elliot for the joy
+and the power that belong to great patrons of the arts. An immense
+vitality went away with them all. So long as they were with her the
+little Arab house, the little African garden, had stood in the center of
+things, in the heart of vital things. The two women had troubled
+Charmian. Madame Sennier had almost frightened her. Yet something in
+both of them fascinated, must always fascinate such a mind and
+temperament as hers. They meant so much to the men who were known. And
+they had made themselves known. Both were women who stood apart from the
+great crowd. When their names were mentioned everyone--who counted--knew
+who they were.
+
+As to Jacques Sennier, he left a crevasse in the life at
+Djenan-el-Maqui. It had been a dangerous experience for Charmian, the
+associating in intimacy with the little famous man. Her secret ambitions
+were irritated almost to the point of nervous exasperation. But she only
+knew it now that he was gone.
+
+Madame Sennier had frightened her.
+
+"_Mais, ma chere, ce n'est pas serieux!_"
+
+The words had been said with an air of hard and careless authority, as
+if the speaker knew she was expressing the obvious truth, and a truth
+known to both her hearers; and then the words which had followed: "One
+has only to look at your interesting husband, to see him in the African
+_milieu_, to see that!"
+
+What had happened at Constantine? How had Claude been?
+
+Charmian wanted so much to see him, to hear his account of the whole
+matter, that she telegraphed:
+
+     "Come back as soon as you can they have gone very dull
+     here.--CHARMIAN."
+
+She knew that in sending this telegram she was coming out of her role;
+but her nerves drove her into the weakness.
+
+Within a week Claude and Gillier returned.
+
+Charmian noticed at once that their expedition had not drawn the two men
+together, that their manner to each other was cold and constrained. On
+the day of their return she persuaded Gillier to dine at the villa. He
+seemed reluctant to accept, but she overcame his hesitation.
+
+"I want to hear all about it," she said. "You must remember what a keen
+interest I have in everything that has to do with the opera."
+
+Gillier looked at her oddly, with a sort of furtive inquiry, she
+thought. Then he said formally:
+
+"I am delighted to stay, madame."
+
+During dinner he became more expansive, but Claude seemed to Charmian to
+become more constrained. Beneath his constraint excitement lay in
+hiding. He looked tired; but his imaginative eyes shone as if they could
+not help speaking, although his lips were often dumb. Only when he was
+talking to Susan Fleet did he seem to be comparatively at ease.
+
+The good Algerian wine went round, and Gillier's tongue was gradually
+unloosed. Some of the crust of formality flaked off from him, and his
+voice became a little louder. His manner, too, was more animated.
+Nevertheless, Charmian noticed that from time to time he regarded her
+with the oddly furtive look at which she had wondered before dinner.
+
+Presently Gillier found himself alone with Charmian. Susan Fleet and
+Claude were pacing up and down in the garden among the geraniums.
+Charmian and Gillier sat at the edge of the court. Gillier sipped his
+Turkish coffee, poured out a glass of old brandy, clipped a big Havana
+cigar, which he took from an open box on a little low table beside him.
+His large eyes rested on Charmian, and she thought how disagreeably
+expressive they were. She did not like this man, though she admired his
+remarkable talent. But she had had a purpose in persuading him to stay
+that evening, and she was resolved to carry it out.
+
+"Has it gone off well?" she asked, with a careful lightness, a careful
+carelessness which she hoped was deceiving. "Were you able to put my
+husband in the way of seeing and hearing everything that could help him
+with his music?"
+
+"Oh, yes, madame! He saw, heard everything."
+
+Gillier blew forth a cloud of smoke, turned a little in his chair and
+looked at his cigar. He seemed to be considering something.
+
+"Then the expedition was a success?" said Charmian.
+
+Gillier glanced at her and took another sip of brandy.
+
+"Who knows, madame?"
+
+"Who knows? Why, how do you mean?"
+
+"Madame, since I have been away with your husband I confess I begin to
+have certain doubts."
+
+"Doubts!" said Charmian, in a changed and almost challenging voice. "I
+don't quite understand."
+
+"That your husband is a clever man, I realize. He has evidently much
+knowledge of the technique of music, much imagination. He is an
+original, though he seldom shows it, and wishes to conceal it."
+
+"Then--"
+
+"A moment, madame! You will say, 'That is good for the opera!'"
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"That depends. I do not know whether his sort of originality is what the
+public will appreciate. But I do know very well that your husband and I
+will never get on together."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He is not my sort. I don't understand him. And I confess that I feel
+anxious."
+
+"Anxious? What about, monsieur?"
+
+"Madame, I have written a great libretto. I want a great opera made of
+it. It is my nature to speak frankly; perhaps you may call it brutally,
+but I am not _homme du monde_. I am not a little man of the salons. I am
+not accustomed to live in kid gloves. I have sweated. I have seen life.
+I have been, and I still am, poor--poor, madame! But, madame, I do not
+intend to remain sunk to my neck in poverty for ever. No!"
+
+"Of course not--with your talent!"
+
+"Ah, that is just it!"
+
+His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
+speaking almost with violence.
+
+"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
+that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
+it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
+will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
+go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his glass of
+brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great
+effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage
+as great as mine? I doubt it."
+
+"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
+to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
+not a note of it."
+
+"No. And that enables me--"
+
+"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
+Gillier?"
+
+"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"
+
+"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
+thinking of?"
+
+"I feared by your words, your manner--"
+
+"I assure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
+what you were saying."
+
+"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
+husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal
+offense--pronouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.
+The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
+in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.
+
+"Yes?" said Charmian.
+
+"Madame?"
+
+"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
+us."
+
+"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
+success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
+Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame,
+believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
+associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
+different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
+has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
+lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
+understand something of the life not merely in, but that
+underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I
+say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is only the difference between the French and English
+temperaments."
+
+"No, madame. It is the difference between the man who is and the man who
+is not afraid to live."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said Charmian coldly. "But really it is not a
+matter which I can discuss with you."
+
+"I have no wish to discuss it. All I wish to say is this"--he looked
+down, hesitated, then with a sort of dogged obstinacy continued, "that I
+am willing to buy back my libretto from you at the price for which I
+sold it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not likely to suit
+your husband's talent. I am very poor indeed, alas! but I prefer to lose
+a hundred pounds rather than to--"
+
+"Have you spoken to my husband of this?" Charmian interrupted him.
+
+She was almost trembling with anger and excitement, but she managed to
+speak quietly.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"You have asked me a question--"
+
+"I have asked no question, madame!"
+
+"Do you mean to say you are not asking me if we will resell the
+libretto?"
+
+Gillier was silent.
+
+"My answer is that the libretto is our property and that we intend to
+keep it. If you offered us five times what we gave you for it the answer
+would be the same."
+
+She paused. Gillier said nothing. She looked at him and suddenly anger,
+a sense of outrage, got the better of her, and she added with intense
+bitterness:
+
+"We are living here in North Africa, we have given up our home, our
+friends, our occupations, everything--our life in England"--her voice
+trembled. "Everything, I say, in order to do justice to your work, and
+you come, you dare to come to us, and ask--ask--"
+
+Gillier got up.
+
+"Madame, I see it is useless. You have bought my work, if you choose to
+keep it--"
+
+"We do choose to keep it."
+
+"Then I can do nothing."
+
+He pulled out his watch.
+
+"It is late. I must wish you good-night, madame. Kindly say good-night
+for me to that lady, your friend, and to Monsieur Heath."
+
+He bowed. Charmian did not hold out her hand. She meant to, but it
+seemed to her that her hand refused to move, as if it had a will of its
+own to resist hers.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+She watched his rather short and broad figure pass across the open space
+of the court and disappear.
+
+After he had gone she moved across the court to the fountain and sat
+down at its edge. She was trembling now, and her excitement was growing
+in solitude. But she still had the desire to govern it, the hope that
+she would be able to do so. She felt that she had been grossly insulted
+by Gillier. But she was not only angry with him. She stared at the
+rising and falling water, clasping her hands tightly together. "I will
+be calm!" she was saying to herself. "I will be calm, mistress of
+myself."
+
+But suddenly she got up, went swiftly across the court to the garden
+entrance, and called out:
+
+"Susan! Claude! Where are you?"
+
+Her voice sounded to her sharp and piercing in the night.
+
+"What is it, Charmian?" answered Claude's voice from the distance.
+
+"I'm going to bed. It's late. Monsieur Gillier has gone."
+
+"Coming!" answered Claude's voice.
+
+Charmian retreated to the house.
+
+As she came into the drawing-room she looked at her watch. It was barely
+ten o'clock. In a moment Susan Fleet entered, followed by Claude.
+Susan's calm eyes glanced at Charmian's face. Then she said, in her
+quiet, agreeable voice:
+
+"I'm going to my room. I have two or three letters to write, and I shall
+read a little before going to bed. It isn't really very late, but I
+daresay you are tired."
+
+She took Charmian's hand and held it for an instant. And during that
+instant Charmian felt much calmer.
+
+"Good-night, Susan dear. Monsieur Gillier asked me to say good-night to
+you for him."
+
+Susan did not kiss her, said good-night to Claude, and went quietly
+away.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said, directly she had gone. "What's the matter,
+Charmian? Why did Gillier go away so early?"
+
+"Let us go upstairs," she answered.
+
+Remembering the sound of her voice in the court, she strove to keep it
+natural, even gentle, now. Susan's recent touch had helped her a little.
+
+"All right," he answered.
+
+"Come into my sitting-room for a minute," she said, when they were in
+the narrow gallery which ran round the drawing-room on the upper story
+of the house.
+
+Next to her bedroom Charmian had a tiny room, a sort of nook, where she
+wrote her letters and did accounts.
+
+"Well, what is it?" Claude asked again, when he had followed her into
+this room, which was lit only by a hanging antique lamp.
+
+"How could you show the libretto to Madame Sennier?" said Charmian. "How
+could you be so mad as to do such a thing?"
+
+As she finished speaking she sat down on the little divan in the
+embrasure of the small grated window.
+
+"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I have never shown the libretto to
+Madame Sennier. What could put such an idea into your head?"
+
+"But you must have shown it!"
+
+"Charmian, I have this moment told you that I haven't."
+
+"She has read it."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"I am positive she has read it."
+
+"Then Gillier must have shown her a copy of it."
+
+Charmian was silent for a minute. Then she said:
+
+"You did not show it to anyone while you were at Constantine?"
+
+"I didn't say that."
+
+"Ah! You--you let Mrs. Shiffney see it!"
+
+Her voice rose as she said the last words.
+
+"I suppose I have a right to allow anyone I choose to read a libretto I
+have bought and paid for," he said coldly, almost sternly.
+
+"You did give it to Mrs. Shiffney then! You did! You did!"
+
+"Certainly I did!"
+
+"And then--then you come to me and say that Madame Sennier hasn't read
+it!"
+
+There was a sound of acute, almost of fierce exasperation in her voice.
+
+"She had not read my copy."
+
+"I say she has!"
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney herself specially advised me not to show it to her."
+
+"To her--to Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mrs. Shiffney advised you! Oh--you--oh, that men should claim to have
+keener intellects than we women! Ah! Ah!"
+
+She began to laugh hysterically, then suddenly put a handkerchief before
+her mouth, turned her head away from him and pressed her face, with the
+handkerchief still held to it, against the cushions of the divan. Her
+body shook.
+
+"Charmian!" he said. "Charmian!"
+
+She looked up. All one side of her face was red. She dropped her
+handkerchief on the floor.
+
+"Do you understand now?" she said. "But, of course, you don't. Well,
+then!"
+
+She put both her hands palm downward on the divan, and, speaking slowly
+with an emphasis that was cutting, and stretching her body till her
+shoulders were slightly raised, she said:
+
+"Just now, while Susan and you were in the garden, Armand Gillier asked
+me if we would give up his libretto."
+
+"Give up the libretto?"
+
+"Sell it back to him for one hundred pounds. He also said he was very
+poor. Do you put the two things together?"
+
+"You think he fancies--"
+
+"No. I am sure he knows he could resell it at an advance to Jacques
+Sennier. Those two--Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier--went to
+Constantine with the intention of finding out what you were doing."
+
+"Absurd!"
+
+"Is it? Just tell me! Wasn't it Mrs. Shiffney who began to talk of the
+libretto?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Of course it was! And didn't she pretend to be deeply interested in
+what you were doing?"
+
+Claude flushed.
+
+"And didn't she talk of how other artists had trusted her with secrets
+nobody else knew? And didn't she--didn't she--"
+
+But something in Claude's eyes stopped her as she was going to
+say--"make love to you."
+
+"And so you gave your libretto up to our enemy to read, and now they are
+trying to bribe Gillier to ruin us. Why are we here? Why did I give up
+everything, my whole life, my mother, my friends, our little house,
+everything I cared for, everything that has made my life till now?
+Simply for you and for your success. And then for the first woman who
+comes along--"
+
+Her cheeks were flaming. As she thought more about what had happened a
+storm of jealousy swept through her heart.
+
+"That's not true or fair--what you imply!" said Claude. "I never--Mrs.
+Shiffney is absolutely nothing to me--nothing!"
+
+"Do you understand now that she got the libretto in order to show it to
+Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Did Gillier ever say so?"
+
+"Of course not! Even if he knows it, do you think it was necessary he
+should--to a woman!"
+
+The contempt in her voice seemed to cut into him. He began, against his
+will, to feel that Charmian must be right in her supposition, to believe
+that he had been tricked.
+
+"We have no proof," he said.
+
+Charmian raised her eyebrows and sank back on the divan. She was
+struggling against an outburst of tears. Her lips moved.
+
+"Proof! Proof!" she said at last.
+
+Her lips moved violently. She got up, and tried hurriedly to go by
+Claude into the gallery; but he put out a hand and caught her by the
+arm.
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+She tried to get away. But he held her.
+
+"I do understand. You have given up a lot for me. Perhaps I was a great
+fool at Constantine. I begin to believe I was. But, after all, there's
+no great harm done. The libretto is mine--ours, ours. And we're not
+going to give it up. I'll try--I'll try to put my heart into the music,
+to bring off a real success, to give you all you want, pay you back for
+all you've given up for me and the work. Of course, I may fail--"
+
+She stopped his mouth with her lips, wrenched herself from his grasp,
+and hurried away.
+
+A moment later he heard the heavy low door of her bedroom creak as she
+pushed it to, then the grinding of the key in the lock.
+
+He sat down on the divan she had just left. For a moment he sat still,
+facing the gallery, and the carved wooden balustrade which protected its
+further side. Then he turned and looked out through the low, grated
+window, from which no doubt in days long since gone by veiled Arab women
+had looked as they sat idly on the divan.
+
+He saw a section of almost black-purple sky. He saw some stars. And,
+leaning his cheek on his hand, he gazed through the little window for a
+long, long time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+More than a year had passed away. April held sway over Algeria.
+
+In the white Arab house on the hill Claude and Charmian still lived and
+Claude still worked. To escape the great heat of the previous summer
+they had gone to England for a time, but early October had found them
+once more at Djenan-el-Maqui, and since then they had not stirred.
+
+Their visit to London had been a strange experience for Charmian.
+
+They had arrived in town at the beginning of July, and had stayed with
+Mrs. Mansfield in Berkeley Square. Mrs. Mansfield had not paid her
+proposed visit to Algiers. She had written that she was growing old and
+lazy, and dreaded a sea voyage. But she had received them with a warmth
+of affection which had earned their immediate forgiveness. There was
+still a month of "season" to run, and Charmian went about and saw her
+old friends. But Claude refused to go out, and returned at once to
+orchestral studies with his "coach." He even remained in London during
+the whole of August and September, while Charmian paid some visits, and
+went to the sea with her mother. Thus they had been separated for a time
+after their long sojourn together in the closest intimacy.
+
+Charmian found that she missed Claude very much. One day she said to her
+mother, with pretended lightness and smiling:
+
+"Madre, I've got such a habit of Claude and Claude's work that I seem to
+be in half when I'm not with him."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield wondered whether her son-in-law felt in half when he was
+by himself in London.
+
+To Charmian, coming back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had
+sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the
+first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had
+often longed to have a party in the evening to look forward to. In
+England she realized that not only had she got a habit of Claude, but
+that she had got a habit, or almost a habit, of Africa and a quiet life
+in the sunshine under blue skies. If the opera were finished, the need
+for living in Mustapha removed, would she be glad not to return to
+Djenan-el-Maqui? The mere thought of never seeing the little white house
+with its cupolas and its flat roof again sent a sharp pang through her.
+Pierre, with his arched eyebrows and upraised, upturned palm, "La Grande
+Jeanne," Bibi, little Fatma, they had become almost a dear part of her
+life.
+
+But soon she fell into old ways of thought and of action, though she was
+never, she believed, quite the same Charmian as before. She longed, as
+of old, but even more strongly, to conquer the set, and this world of
+pleasure-seekers and connoisseurs. But she looked upon them from the
+outside, whereas before she had been inside. During her long absence she
+had certainly "dropped out" a little. She realized the root indifference
+of most people to those who are not perpetually before them, making a
+claim to friendship. When she reappeared in London many whom she had
+hitherto looked upon as friends greeted her with a casual, "Oh, are you
+back after all? We thought you had quite forsaken us!" And it was
+impossible for even Charmian to suppose that such a forsaking would have
+been felt as a great affliction.
+
+This recognition on her part of the small place she had held, even as
+merely a charming girl, in this society, made Charmian think of
+Djenan-el-Maqui with a stronger affection, but also made her long in a
+new, and more ruthless way, to triumph in London, as clever wives of
+great celebrities triumph. She saw Madame Sennier several times, as
+usual surrounded and feted. And Madame Sennier, though she nodded and
+said a few words, scarcely seemed to remember who Charmian was. Only
+once did Charmian see a peculiarly keen expression in the yellow eyes as
+they looked at her. That was when some mention was made of a project of
+Crayford's, his intention to build a big opera house in London. Madame
+Sennier had shrugged her shoulders. But as she answered, "What would be
+the use? The Metropolitan has nearly killed him. Covent Garden, with
+its subscription, would simply finish him off. He has moved Heaven and
+earth to get Jacques' new opera either for America or England, but of
+course we laughed at him. He may pretend as much as he likes, but he's
+got nothing up his sleeve"--the yellow eyes had fixed themselves upon
+Charmian with an intent look that was almost like a look of inquiry.
+
+To Sennier she had only spoken twice. The first time he had forgotten
+who she was. The second time he had exclaimed, "Ah, the syrups! the
+greengage! and the moonlight among the passion-flowers!" and had greeted
+her with effusion.
+
+But he had never come to call on her.
+
+She still felt a sort of fondness for him; but she understood that he
+was like a child who needed perpetual petting and did not care very much
+from whom it came.
+
+The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long
+absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how
+much of a nobody she was in it.
+
+She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much
+more to conquer it and to dominate it.
+
+On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the
+heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill,
+when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices
+of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the
+three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed
+by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at
+her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing
+in London.
+
+From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha
+after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost
+as a living thing--a thing for which she had fought, from which she had
+beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers.
+They had no other child. She did not regret that.
+
+Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The
+paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was
+inclined to believe that by constant effort he had strengthened his
+will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And
+the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him
+without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was
+gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in
+the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of
+them.
+
+The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with
+Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had
+brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of
+calm even in the conquered.
+
+Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at
+the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By
+degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to
+do.
+
+He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers
+were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked
+things over."
+
+Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by
+Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a note from Saint
+Eugene. Gillier was once more in Algeria. He had never given them a sign
+of life since he had tried to buy back his libretto from them. Now he
+wrote formally, saying he was paying a short visit to his family, and
+asking permission to call at Djenan-el-Maqui at any hour that would suit
+them. His note was addressed to Claude, who at once showed it to
+Charmian.
+
+"Of course we must let him come," Claude said.
+
+"Of course!"
+
+She turned the note over, twisted it in her fingers.
+
+"How I hate him!" she said. "I can't help it. His insult to you and--"
+
+"Don't let us go into all that again. It is so long ago."
+
+"This letter brings it all back."
+
+She made a grimace of disgust.
+
+"Why should you see him?" said Claude. "Let me see him alone. You can
+easily have an engagement. You are going to those theatricals at the
+Hotel Continental on Friday. Let me have him here then."
+
+"Shall I?" She glanced at Claude. "No, I'd better be here too."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know--but I'd better! Tell him to come on Thursday."
+
+"Lunch?"
+
+"Oh, no! Let us just have him in the afternoon."
+
+Gillier came at the time appointed, and was received by Charmian, who
+made a creditable effort to behave as if she were at her ease and glad
+to see him. She made him sit down with her in the cosiest corner of the
+drawing-room, gave him coffee and a cigarette, and promised that Claude
+would come in a moment.
+
+In the morning of that day she had persuaded Claude to let her have a
+quarter of an hour alone with Gillier. He had asked her why she wanted
+to be alone with a man she disliked. She had replied, "After
+Constantine, don't you think you had better leave the practical part of
+it to me?" Claude had reddened slightly, but he had only said, "Very
+well. But I don't quite see what you mean. We have no reason to suppose
+Gillier has a special purpose in coming."
+
+"No, but I should like that quarter of an hour."
+
+So now she and Gillier sat together in the shady drawing-room, and she
+asked him about Paris and his family, and he replied with a stiff
+formality which had in it something military.
+
+Directly Charmian had looked at Gillier she had realized that he had a
+definite purpose in coming. She was on the defensive, but she tried not
+to show it. Presently she said:
+
+"Have you been working--writing?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Another libretto?"
+
+"Madame," Gillier said, with a sort of icy fierceness, "I cannot believe
+that you are good enough to be genuinely interested in my unsuccessful
+life."
+
+After the unpleasant scene at Djenan-el-Maqui Gillier had returned to
+Paris, shut himself in, and labored almost with fury on a libretto
+destined for Jacques Sennier. He had taken immense pains and trouble,
+and had not spared time. At last the work had been completed, typed,
+and submitted to Madame Sennier. After a week of anxious waiting Gillier
+had received the libretto with the following note:
+
+    "DEAR GILLIER,--This might do very well for some unknown
+    genius, say Monsieur Heath, but it is no good to a man like Jacques.
+    Nevertheless, we believe in you still, and renew our offer. Send us
+    a fine libretto, _such as I know you can write_, and we will pay you
+    five times as much as anyone else would, on account of a royalty. We
+    should not mind even if _someone else_ had already tried to set it.
+    All we care about is to get your _best work_.
+                                              HENRIETTE SENNIER."
+
+Gillier had torn this note up with fury. Then he had thought things over
+and paid Madame Sennier a visit. It was this visit which had prompted
+his return to Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"But I hope it won't be unsuccessful much longer," Charmian said, with
+deliberate graciousness.
+
+"I hope so too, madame."
+
+Something in his voice, a new tone, almost startled her. But she
+continued, without any change of manner:
+
+"We must all hope for a great success."
+
+"We, madame?"
+
+"You and I and my husband."
+
+Gillier bit his moustache and looked down. A heavy gloom seemed to have
+overspread him. After a moment he looked up, leaned back, as if
+determined to be at his ease, and said abruptly:
+
+"Monsieur Sennier has completed a new opera. It is to be produced at the
+Metropolitan Opera House in New York some time next winter."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+Charmian tried to keep all expression out of her voice as she spoke.
+
+"Since I last saw you, madame," Gillier continued, "I have managed to
+get a look at the libretto."
+
+Without knowing that she did so Charmian leaned forward quickly and
+moved her hands.
+
+"It does not approach my work, the work your husband bought from me for
+only one hundred pounds, in strength and drama."
+
+"Your libretto is splendid. Mr. Lake and I have always thought so; and
+of course my husband agrees with us. But you know that."
+
+Gillier pulled his thick moustache, looked quickly round the room, then
+at his hands, which he had abruptly brought down on his knees, and then
+at Charmian.
+
+"I have reason to believe that Jacques Sennier--or rather Madame
+Sennier, for she read all the libretti sent in to him, and only showed
+him those she thought worth considering--that if Madame Sennier had seen
+the libretto I sold to your husband Sennier would have set
+mine--mine--in preference to the one he has set."
+
+"Indeed!" said Charmian, with studied indifference.
+
+"Yes!" he exclaimed, almost with violence.
+
+"All this is very interesting. But I don't see what it has to do with me
+and my husband. You were good enough to offer to buy back your libretto
+from us last year. We refused. Our refusal--"
+
+"Your refusal, madame! I never spoke about the matter to your husband. I
+never asked him."
+
+"Have you come here now to ask him? Is that what you mean, monsieur?"
+
+Gillier got up, throwing his cigarette end into the brass coffee tray.
+He was evidently much excited. As he stood up in front of her Charmian
+thought that he looked suddenly more common, coarser. He thrust his
+hands into the pockets of his black trousers.
+
+"I must understand the position," he began.
+
+"It is perfectly clear. Forgive me, monsieur, but I must say I think it
+rather bad taste on your part to return to a subject which has been
+finally disposed of and which is very disagreeable to me."
+
+"Madame, I am here to say to you that I cannot consider it as finally
+disposed of till I have discussed it with Monsieur Heath. I came here
+prepared to make a proposition."
+
+"It is useless."
+
+"Madame, I trust that your husband is not endeavoring to avoid me."
+
+Charmian got up and sharply clapped her hands. The Arab boy, Bibi,
+appeared.
+
+"Bibi, ask monsieur to come," she said to him in French.
+
+"_Bieng, madame_," replied Bibi, who turned and walked softly away.
+
+During the two or three minutes which elapsed before Claude came in
+Charmian and Gillier said nothing. Gillier, who, under the influence of
+excitement, was losing his veneer of good manners, moved about the room
+pretending to examine the few bibelots it contained. His face was
+flushed. He still kept his hands in his pockets. Charmian sat still in
+her corner, watching him. She was too angry to speak. And what was there
+to be said now? Although she had a good deal of will she was clever
+enough to realize when its exercise would be useless. She knew that she
+could do nothing more with this man. Otherwise she would not have sent
+for Claude.
+
+"_V'la, Mousou!_"
+
+Bibi had returned and gently pointed to his master, smiling.
+
+"_Bon jour_, Gillier!" said Claude, as the Frenchman swung round
+sharply.
+
+"_Bon jour!_"
+
+They shook hands. Claude looked from Gillier to his wife.
+
+"You were smoking?" he said, glancing at the tray. "Won't you have
+another cigarette?"
+
+"_Merci!_"
+
+"Anyhow, I will."
+
+He picked up the cigarette box.
+
+"We haven't seen you for a long while." He lit a cigarette. "Aren't you
+going to sit down?"
+
+After a pause Gillier sat down. His eyes were fixed on Claude.
+
+"I am glad you have come," he said. "Madame does not quite understand--"
+
+"I understand perfectly, Monsieur Gillier," Charmian interrupted. "Pray
+don't endow me with a stupidity which I don't possess."
+
+"I prefer at any rate to explain the reason of my visit to Monsieur
+Heath, madame."
+
+"Have you come with a special object then?" said Claude.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By all means tell me what it is."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" said Gillier. "What is the good of a cloud of words
+between two men? I want to buy back the libretto I sold to you more than
+a year ago."
+
+Charmian gazed at her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive
+face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought
+it looked peculiarly inexpressive as he replied:
+
+"Do you? Why?"
+
+"Why? Because I don't think you and I are suited to work together. I
+don't think we could ever make a satisfactory combination in art. This
+has been my opinion ever since I was with you at Constantine."
+
+"More than a year ago. And you only come here and say so now!"
+
+Gillier was silent and fidgeted on the divan.
+
+"Surely you must have some other reason?" said Claude in a very quiet,
+almost unnaturally quiet voice.
+
+"That is one reason, and an excellent one. Another is, however, that if
+you will consent to sell me back my libretto I believe I could get it
+taken up by a man, a composer, who is more in sympathy with me and my
+artistic aims than you could ever be."
+
+"I see. And what about all the months of work I have put in? What about
+all the music I have composed? Are you here to ask me to throw it away,
+or what?"
+
+Gillier was silent.
+
+"Surely your proposition isn't a serious one?" said Claude, still
+speaking with complete self-control.
+
+"But I say it is! I say"--Gillier raised his voice--"that it is serious.
+I am a poor man, and I am sick of waiting for success. I sold my
+libretto to you in a hurry, not knowing what I was doing. Now I have a
+chance, a great chance, of being associated with someone who is already
+famous, who would make the success of my libretto a certainty--"
+
+"A chance, when your libretto is my property!" interrupted Claude.
+
+"Oh, I know as well as you do that it's a hard thing to ask you to throw
+away all these months of labor! I don't think I could have done it,
+though in this world every man, every artist especially, must think of
+himself, if it wasn't for one thing."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+"Your heart isn't in the work!" said Gillier defiantly, but with a
+curious air of conviction--the conviction of an acute man who had made a
+discovery which could not be contested or gainsaid.
+
+"That's not true, Monsieur Gillier!" said Charmian, with hot energy.
+
+Claude said nothing, and Gillier continued, raising his voice:
+
+"It is true. Your talent and mine are not fitted to be joined together,
+and you are artist enough to know it as well as I do. I haven't heard
+your music; but I can tell. I may be poor, I may be unknown--that
+doesn't matter! I've got the instinct that doesn't lie, can't lie. If I
+had known you as I do now, before I had sold my libretto, you never
+should have had it, even if you had offered me five hundred pounds
+instead of a hundred, and nobody else would have looked at it. With your
+temperament, with your way of thinking, you'll never make a success of
+it--never! I tell you that--I who am speaking to you!"
+
+The veins in his temples swelled, and he frowned.
+
+"Give me back my libretto and take back your money! Let me have my
+chance of success. Madame--she is hard! She cares nothing! But--"
+
+"Monsieur, I must ask you to leave my wife's name out," said Claude.
+
+And for the first time since he had come into the room he spoke with
+stern determination.
+
+He had become very pale, and now looked strangely moved.
+
+"I won't have her name brought in," he added. "This is my affair."
+
+"Very well! Will you let me buy back my libretto?"
+
+Charmian expected an instant stern refusal from her husband. But after
+Gillier's question there was a prolonged pause. She wanted to break it,
+to answer fiercely for Claude; but she did not dare to. For a moment
+something in her husband's look and manner dominated her. For a moment
+she was in subjection. She sat still staring at Claude, waiting for him
+to speak. He sat looking down, and it seemed to her as if he were
+wrestling as Jacob wrestled with the angel. His white forehead drew her
+eyes. She was filled with fear; but when he looked up at her the fear
+grew. She felt almost sick--sick with apprehension.
+
+"Claude!" she said. "Oh, Claude!"
+
+It seemed that his eyes had put a great question to her, and now her
+voice had answered it.
+
+Claude turned to Armand Gillier.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you can't have your libretto back. It's mine, and
+I'm going to keep it."
+
+When Gillier was gone Charmian said, almost in a faltering voice, and
+with none of her usual self-possession of manner:
+
+"How--how could you bear that man's insults as you did?"
+
+"His insults?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Claude looked at her in silence. And again she was conscious of fear.
+
+"Don't let us ever speak of this again," he answered at last.
+
+He went away.
+
+That day he was in his workroom till very late. He did not come to tea.
+The evening fell; but he was not working on the opera. Charmian heard
+him playing Bach.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the end of April Alston Lake came once more to visit them.
+
+Since those London days when they had first met him Lake had made great
+progress toward the fulfilment of his ambition. His energy and will were
+beginning to reap a good reward. He was making money, enough money to
+live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford,
+had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera.
+When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an
+infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a
+light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and
+sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that was boyish still
+pleasantly lingered with him. In him, too, there was something
+courageous that inspired courage in others.
+
+This time he announced he could stay for a month if they did not mind.
+He wanted a thorough rest before the many concerts he was going to sing
+at during the London season. Both Charmian and Claude were delighted.
+When Claude heard of it he was silent for a moment. Then he began to
+reckon.
+
+"The thirtieth to-day, isn't it? By a month do you mean a month or four
+weeks?"
+
+"Well, four weeks, old chap!"
+
+"That is less than a month."
+
+"I wish it weren't. But I have to sing in London at the Bechstein Hall
+early in June. So I'm running it pretty close as it is."
+
+"May the twenty-eighth you go, then," said Claude.
+
+"That's it. But why these higher mathematics?"
+
+Claude only smiled and went out of the room.
+
+"What is he up to, Mrs. Charmian?" asked Lake mystified.
+
+"I don't know," she answered.
+
+"Does he want to get rid of me? Is that why he was so keen to know
+whether it was four weeks or a month?" said Lake, laughing.
+
+"I am afraid that probably is it. But come up and see the flowers I've
+put in your room."
+
+"This is a little Paradise," said Lake, in his ringing baritone voice.
+"Sometimes this winter in Paris, when I was all in, don't you know--"
+
+"All in?"
+
+"Blues."
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"I'd think of Djenan-el-Maqui, and wish I was a composer instead of a
+singer--for a fifth of a minute."
+
+"Oh!" she said reproachfully. "Only a fifth!"
+
+"I know. It wasn't long. But you see I'm born to sing, so I'm bound to
+love it more than anything else. Making a noise--oh, it's rare!"
+
+He opened his mouth and ran up a scale to the high A.
+
+"I can get there pretty well now, don't you think?"
+
+"Splendid! Your voice gets bigger and bigger!" she said, with real
+enthusiasm. "But it's almost--"
+
+He stopped her.
+
+"I know what you're going to say; but I shall always be a baritone. If
+you knew as much as I do about baritones turned into tenors, you'd say,
+'Leave it alone, my boy!' and that's what I'm going to do. Now what
+about these flowers? It is good to be here."
+
+Claude did not join Alston Lake in making holiday. Indeed, Charmian
+noticed that he was working much harder than usual, as if Lake's coming
+had been an incentive to him.
+
+"I don't apologize to you, Alston," he said.
+
+"Odd if you did when I was the first to try and set you on to an opera.
+Besides, you can't get ahead too fast now. There's--"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Crayford'll be over this summer," he remarked, giving a casual tone to
+his voice.
+
+"Ah!" said Claude.
+
+And the conversation dropped.
+
+Only in the early morning, and for an hour, or an hour and a half after
+lunch, did Claude intermit his labors. In the morning the three of them
+rode, on good horses hired from the Vitoz stables. After lunch they sat
+in the little court of the fountain, smoked and talked. Conversation
+never flagged when Alston was there. His young energy bred a desire for
+expression in those about him. And Charmian and Claude were now his most
+intimate friends. He identified himself with them in a charming way, was
+devoted to their fortunes, and assumed, without a trace of conceit,
+their devotion to his. When Claude, about three o'clock, got up and went
+away to his workroom Alston often went off for a stroll alone. Between
+tea and dinner time, if Charmian had no engagement, she and Alston
+walked together in the scented Bois de Boulogne, past "Tananarivo," or
+drove down to the Jardin d'Essai, and spent an hour there near the
+shimmering sea.
+
+In these many intimate hours Charmian learnt to appreciate the chivalry
+and delicacy peculiar to well-bred American men in their relations with
+women. Although she and Alston were both young, and she was an
+attractive woman, she felt as safe with him as if he were her brother.
+His life in Paris had left him entirely unspoiled, had even left him in
+possession of the characteristic and open-hearted naivete which was one
+of his chief attractions, though he was quite unaware of it. She was
+very happy with Alston. But often she thought of Claude, far away on the
+hill, shut in, resigning all this freedom, this delicious open-air life,
+which she was enjoying with his friend.
+
+"He's working almost too hard," she said one day when they were sitting
+in the Jardin d'Essai, "and he will work at night now. He never used to
+do that. Don't you think he's beginning to look rather white and worn
+out?"
+
+She spoke with some anxiety.
+
+"Sometimes he does look a bit tired," Alston allowed. "But a man's bound
+to when he puts his back into a thing. And there's not much doubt as to
+whether old Claude's back is in the opera. I say, Mrs. Charmian, how far
+has he got exactly?"
+
+"Practically the whole of the music is composed, I believe. It's the
+orchestration that takes such a lot of time."
+
+"Well, and how far has that got? Claude's never told me plump out.
+Composers never do. And I know better than to pump them. It's
+fatal--that! They simply can't stand it."
+
+"I know. I believe the opera might be ready by the end of this year."
+
+"Not before then?"
+
+They looked at each other, then Charmian said:
+
+"Oh, Alston, if you only knew how difficult it is to me to wait--to wait
+and not to show any impatience to him. Sometimes--well, now and then,
+I've shut myself in and cried with impatience, cried angrily. I've
+wanted to bite things. One day I actually did bite a pillow."
+
+She laughed, but her cheeks were flushed.
+
+"It's the perpetual keeping it in that is such a torment. I know how
+wicked it would be to hurry him. And he does work so hard. And I've
+heard of people taking ten years over an opera. Claude only began about
+a year and five months ago. He's been marvellously quick, really. But,
+oh, sometimes I feel as if this suppressed impatience were making me
+ill, physically and mentally, as if it were a kind of poison stealing
+all through me! Can you understand?"
+
+"Can I? You bet! I only wish the thing could be ready before Crayford
+goes back to the States."
+
+"When does he go?"
+
+"Some time in September, I believe. He goes on the Continent after July.
+Of course, July he's in London, June too. Then he has his cure at
+Divonne. If only---- When do you come to London?"
+
+Charmian suddenly grasped his arm.
+
+"Alston, I'll keep him here, give up London, anything to have the opera
+finished by the end of August!"
+
+"Well, but the heat!"
+
+"I don't believe it's too hot upon the hill where we are, with all those
+trees. Every afternoon I expect there's a breeze from the sea. I know we
+could stand it. It's only April now. That would mean four solid months
+of steady work. But then?"
+
+"I'd bring Crayford over."
+
+"Would he come?"
+
+"I'd make him."
+
+"But we might--"
+
+"No, Mrs. Charmian. He ought to hear it in Mustapha. I know him. He's a
+hard business man. But he's awfully susceptible too. And then he's great
+on scenic effects. Now, he's never been in Africa. Think of the glamour
+of it, especially in summer, when the real Africa emerges, by Gee, in
+all its blue and fire! We'd plunge him in it, you and I. That Casbah
+scene--you know, the third act! I'd take him there by moonlight on a
+September night--full moon--show him the women on their terraces and in
+their courts, the town dropping down to the silver below, while the
+native music--by Gee! We'd dazzle him, we'd spread the magic carpet for
+him, we'd carry him away till he couldn't say no, till he'd be as mad on
+the thing as we are!"
+
+"Oh, Alston, if we could!"
+
+She had caught all his enthusiasm. It seemed to her that in North Africa
+Mr. Crayford could not refuse the opera. From that moment she had made
+up her mind. No London season! Whatever happened, she and Claude were
+going to remain at Djenan-el-Maqui till the opera was finished, finished
+to the last detail. That very evening she spoke about it to Claude.
+
+"Claudie," she said. "Are you very keen on going to London this year?"
+
+He looked at her as if almost startled.
+
+"I? But, surely--do you mean that you don't want to go?"
+
+She moved her head.
+
+"Not one little bit."
+
+"Well, but then where do you wish to go?"
+
+"Where? Why should we go anywhere?"
+
+"Stay here?"
+
+"I've come to love this little house, the garden, even those absurd
+goldfish that are always looking for nothing."
+
+"Well, but the heat!"
+
+His voice did not sound reluctant or protesting, only a little doubtful
+and surprised.
+
+"Lots of people stay. Algiers doesn't empty of human beings, only of
+travellers, because it's summer. And we are up on a height."
+
+"That's true. And I could work on quietly."
+
+"Absolutely undisturbed."
+
+"The only thing is I meant to see Jernington."
+
+Jernington was the professor with whom Claude studied orchestration in
+London.
+
+"Get him over here."
+
+"Jernington! Why, he never leaves London!"
+
+"Get him to for a month. We'll pay all his expenses and everything, of
+course."
+
+"How you go ahead!" he said, laughing. "You must be a twin of Alston's,
+I think."
+
+"What has got to be done can be done."
+
+"Well, but the expense; you know, Charmian, we live right up to our
+income."
+
+"Hang the expense! Oh, as Alston would say!"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You really are a marvellous wife!"
+
+"Am I? Am I?"
+
+"I might sound old Jernington. He'll think I'm raving mad, but still--"
+
+"I only hope," she said, smiling and eager, "that he won't be so raving
+sane as to refuse."
+
+"But what will Madre think, not seeing you--us, I mean?"
+
+Charmian looked grave.
+
+"Yes, I know. But Madre has never come to see us here."
+
+"Oh, Charmian, there could never be a cloud between Madre and us!"
+
+"No, no, never! Still, why has she never come?"
+
+"She really hates the sea. You know she has never in her life done more
+than cross the Channel."
+
+"Do you think that is the reason why she has never come?"
+
+"How can I know?"
+
+"Claude, Madre is strange sometimes. Don't you think so?"
+
+"Strange? She is absolutely herself. She does not take anyone else's
+color, if that is what you mean. I love that in her."
+
+"So do I. Still, I think she is strange."
+
+At this moment Alston came in and the conversation dropped. But both
+husband and wife thought many times of "Madre" that day, and not without
+a certain uneasiness. Was the heart of the mother with them in their
+enterprise?
+
+Charmian put that question to herself. But Claude did not put it. He
+thought of Mrs. Mansfield's intense and fiery eyes. They saw far, saw
+deep. He loved them, the look in them. But he must try to forget them.
+He must give himself to the enthusiasm of his wife and of Alston Lake.
+
+He sent a long telegram to Jernington, saying how difficult it was for
+him to leave Mustapha, and begging Jernington to come over during the
+summer so that they might work together in quiet. All expenses were to
+be paid. Next day he received a telegram from Jernington: "Very
+difficult is it absolutely impossible for you to come to England?"
+
+"I'll answer that," said Charmian.
+
+She telegraphed, "Absolutely impossible--HEATH."
+
+In the late evening a second telegram came from Jernington: "Very well
+suppose I must come--JERNINGTON."
+
+Charmian laughed as she read it over Claude's shoulder.
+
+"The pathos of it," she said. "Poor old Jernington! He is
+horror-stricken. Bury St. Edmunds has been his farthest beat till now
+except for his year in Germany. Claudie, he loves the opera or he would
+never have consented to come. I felt it was a test. The opera, the
+child, has stood it triumphantly. I love old Jernington. And he is a
+first-rate critic, isn't he?"
+
+"Of orchestration, certainly."
+
+"That's half the battle in an opera. I feel so happy. Let us have an
+audition to-night!"
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+"And play us an act right through; the first act. Alston has only heard
+it in bits."
+
+"I don't really care for anyone to hear it yet," Claude said, with
+obvious reluctance.
+
+Yet he desired a verdict--of praise. He longed for encouragement. In old
+days, when he had composed for himself, he had felt indifferent to that.
+But now he was working on something which was planned, which was being
+executed, with the intention to strike upon the imagination of a big
+public. He was no longer indifferent. He was secretly anxious. He longed
+to be told that what he was doing was good.
+
+That evening he was genuinely warmed by the enthusiasm of his wife and
+of Alston.
+
+"And surely," he said to himself, "they would be inclined to be more
+critical than others, to be hypercritical."
+
+He forgot that in some natures desire creates conviction.
+
+On the last day of Alston's visit Charmian and he understood why
+Claude's mathematical powers had been brought to bear on the question of
+its exact duration. Claude himself explained with rather a rueful face.
+
+"I hoped--I thought if you were going to stay for the extra days I might
+possibly have the finale of the opera finished. Even when you told me
+your month meant four weeks I thought I would have a tremendous try to
+complete it. Well, I have had a tremendous try. But I've failed. I must
+have two more weeks, I believe, before I conquer the monster."
+
+He was looking very pale, had dark rings under his eyes, and moved his
+hands nervously while he was speaking.
+
+"That was it!" exclaimed Alston.
+
+"Yes, that was it."
+
+Charmian and Alston exchanged a quick glance.
+
+"When you've done the finale," Alston said, with the firmness of one who
+spoke with permission, even perhaps by special request, "will the opera
+be practically finished?"
+
+"Finished? Good Heavens, no!"
+
+"Well, but if it's the finale of the whole opera?" said Charmian.
+
+"I've got bits here and there to do, and a lot to re-do."
+
+Again Charmian and the American exchanged glances.
+
+"I say, old chap," said Alston. "You read Balzac, don't you?"
+
+"Of course. But what has that to do with the opera?"
+
+"Did you ever read that story of his about a painter who was always
+striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for
+ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One
+day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they
+found a mere mess of paint representing nothing."
+
+"Well?" said Claude, rather stiffly.
+
+"You've got a splendid talent. I hope you're going to trust it."
+
+Claude said nothing, and Alston, in his easy, almost boyish way, glanced
+off to some other topic. But before he started for England he said to
+Charmian:
+
+"Do watch him a bit if you can, Mrs. Charmian, for over-elaboration.
+Don't let him work it to death, I mean, till all the spontaneity is
+gone. I believe that's a danger with him. Somehow I think he lacks
+complete confidence in himself."
+
+"You see it's the first time he has ever tried to do an opera."
+
+"I know. It's natural enough. But do watch out for over-elaboration."
+
+"I'll try to. But I have to be very careful with Claude."
+
+"How d'you mean exactly?"
+
+"He can be very reserved."
+
+"Yes, but you know how to take him. And--well--we can't let the opera be
+anything but a big success, can we?"
+
+If Claude had heard that "we!"
+
+"I say, shall we walk around the garden?" Alston added, after a pause.
+"It isn't quite time to go, and I want to talk over things before Claude
+comes down to see the last of me."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+They went out, and descended the steps from the terrace.
+
+"I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Charmian, that I'm going to bring Crayford
+over whatever happens, whether the opera's done or not. There's heaps
+ready for him to judge by. And you must read him the libretto."
+
+"I?" exclaimed Charmian, startled.
+
+"Yes, you. Study it up! Recite it to yourself. Learn to give it all and
+more than its value. That libretto is going to catch hold of Crayford
+right away, if you read it, and read it well."
+
+When she had recovered from her first shock of surprise Charmian felt
+radiantly happy. She had something to do. Alston, with his shrewd
+outlook, was bringing her a step farther into this enterprise. He was
+right. She remembered Crayford. A woman should read him the libretto,
+and in a _decor_--swiftly her imagination began to work. The _decor_
+should be perfection; and her gown!
+
+"How clever of you to think of that, Alston!" she exclaimed. "I'll study
+as if I were going to be an actress."
+
+"That's the proposition! By Jove, you and I understand each other over
+this. I know Crayford by heart. We've got to what the French call
+'_eblouir_' him when we get him here. We must play upon him with the
+scenery proposition; what he can do in the way of wonderful new stage
+effects. When we've got him thoroughly worked up over the libretto and
+the scenery prop., we'll begin to let him hear the music, but not a
+moment before. We can't be too careful, Mrs. Charmian. Crayford's a man
+who doesn't start going in a hurry on newly laid rails. He wants to test
+every sleeper pretty nearly. But once get him going, and the evening
+express from New York City to Chicago isn't in it with him. Now you and
+I have got to get him started before ever he comes to old Claude. In
+fact--"
+
+He paused, put one finger to his firm round chin.
+
+"But we can decide that a bit later on."
+
+"That? What, Alston?"
+
+"I was going to say it might be as well to get Claude out of the way for
+a day or two while we start on old Crayford here. I suppose it could be
+managed somehow?"
+
+"Alston--" Charmian stopped on the path between the geraniums. "Anything
+can be managed that will help to persuade Mr. Crayford to accept
+Claude's opera."
+
+"Right you are. That's talking! I'll think it all over and let you
+know."
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed. "How I wish the end of August was here! You'll be
+in London. All your time will be filled up. You'll be singing, being
+applauded, _getting on_. And I have to sit here, and wait--wait."
+
+"You'll be studying the libretto."
+
+"So I shall!"
+
+She sent him a grateful look.
+
+"What a good friend you are to us, Alston!" she said, and there was
+heart at that moment in her voice.
+
+"And haven't you been good friends to me? What about the studio? What
+about the Prophet's Chamber? Why, you've given me a sort of a home and
+family, you and old Claude. I can tell you I've often felt lonesome in
+Europe, I've often felt all in, right away from everybody, and my Dad
+trying to starve me out, and all my people dead against what I was
+doing. Since I've known you, well, I've felt quite bully in comparison
+with what it used to be. Claude's success and yours, it's just going to
+be my success too. And that's all there is to it."
+
+He wrung her hand and shouted for Claude.
+
+It was nearly time for him to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Jernington, after sending to Claude several anxious and indeed almost
+deplorable letters, pleading to be let off his bargain by telegram,
+arrived in Algiers in the middle of the following July, with a great
+deal of fuss and very little luggage.
+
+The Heaths welcomed him warmly.
+
+Although he was a native of Suffolk, and had only spent a year in
+Germany, he succeeded in looking almost exactly like a German student.
+Rather large and bulky, he had a quite hairless face, very fair, with
+Teutonic features, and a high forehead, above which the pale hair of his
+head was cropped like the coat of a newly singed horse. His eyes were
+pale blue, introspective and romantic. At the back of his neck, just
+above his low collar, appeared a neat little roll of white flesh.
+Charmian thought he looked as if he had once, consenting, been gently
+boiled. A flowing blue tie, freely peppered with ample white spots, gave
+a Bohemian touch to his pleasant and innocent appearance. He was dressed
+for cool weather in England, and wore boots with square toes and elastic
+sides.
+
+In his special line he was a man of extraordinary talent.
+
+He had intended to be a composer, but had little faculty for original
+work. His knowledge of composition, nevertheless, was enormous, and he
+was the best orchestral "coach" in England.
+
+His heart was in his work. His devotion to a clever pupil knew no
+limits. And he considered Claude the cleverest pupil he had ever taught.
+
+Charmian, therefore, accepted him with enthusiasm--boots, tie, little
+roll of white flesh, the whole of him.
+
+He settled down with them in Mustapha, once he had been conveyed into
+the house, as comfortably as a cat in front of whom, with every tender
+precaution, has been placed a bowl of rich milk. In a couple of days it
+seemed as if he had always been there.
+
+Charmian did not see very much of him. The two men toiled with diligence
+despite the great heat which lay over the land. They began early in the
+morning before the sun was high, rested and slept in the middle of the
+day, resumed work about five, and, with an interval for dinner, went on
+till late in the night.
+
+The English Colony had long since broken up. Only the British
+Vice-Consul and his wife remained, and they lived a good way out in the
+country. Since May few people had come to disturb the peace of
+Djenan-el-Maqui. Charmian dwelt in a strange and sun-smitten isolation.
+She was very much alone. Only now and then some French acquaintance
+would call to see her and sit with her for a little while at evening in
+the garden, or in the courtyard of the fountain.
+
+The beauty, the fierce romance of this land, sometimes excited her
+spirit. Sometimes, with fiery hands, it lulled her into a condition
+almost of apathy. She listened to the fountain, she looked at the sea
+which was always blue, and she felt almost as if some part of her nature
+had fallen away from her, leaving her vague and fragmentary, a Charmian
+lacking some virtue, or vice, that had formerly been hers and had made
+her salient. But this apathy did not last long. The sound of
+Jernington's strangely German voice talking loudly above would disturb
+it, perhaps, or the noise of chords or passages powerfully struck upon
+the piano. And immediately the child was with her again, she was busy
+thinking, planning, hoping, longing, concentrated on the future of the
+child.
+
+She had studied the libretto minutely, had practised reading it aloud.
+It was of course written in French, and she found a clever woman,
+retired from a theatrical career in Paris, Madame Thenant, who gave her
+lessons in elocution, and who finally said that she read the libretto
+"_assez bien_." This from Madame Thenant, who had played Dowagers at the
+Comedie Francaise, was a high compliment. Charmian felt that she was
+ready to make an effect on Jacob Crayford. She was in active
+correspondence with Alston Lake, who was still in London, and who had
+had greater success than before. From him she knew that Crayford was in
+town, and would take his usual "cure" in August at Divonne-les-Bains.
+Lake had "begun upon him" warily, but had not yet even hinted at the
+visit to Africa. After his "cure" Crayford proposed making a motor tour.
+He thought nothing of running all over Europe in his car. Lake was going
+presently to speak of the perfect surfaces of the Algerian roads, "the
+best way perhaps of getting him to go to Algeria." He still wanted
+operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in
+London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he?
+Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude
+wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after
+Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband.
+Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually
+returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of
+it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had
+shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected,
+had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he
+saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the
+giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had
+evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away
+and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had
+inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera."
+Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe
+anyway, where folk could get at him if they wanted to?" had been the
+next question. Lake's answer had rather indicated that the composer was
+very glad to have a good stretch of ocean between himself and any "folk"
+who might want to get at him.
+
+This was the point at which the Lake correspondence with Charmian stood
+in the first week of August. His last letter lay on her knee one
+afternoon, as she sat in a hidden nook at the bottom of the garden, with
+delicate bamboos rustling in a warm south wind about her.
+
+Claude knew nothing of this exchange of letters, of all the planning and
+plotting. It was all for him. Some day, when the result was success, he
+should be told everything, unless by that time it was too late, and the
+steps to success were all forgotten. Charmian did nothing to disturb
+him. She wished him to be obsessed by the work, to do it now merely for
+its own sake. The result of his labors would probably be better if that
+were so. If Crayford did come--and he must come! Charmian was willing it
+every day--his coming would be a surprise to Claude, and would seem to
+be a surprise to Charmian. She would get rid of Claude for a few days
+when Lake forewarned her that their arrival was imminent; would persuade
+him to take a little holiday, to go, perhaps, up into the cork woods to
+Hammam R'rirha. He was very pale, had dark circles beneath his eyes. The
+incessant work was beginning to tell upon him severely. Charmian saw
+that. But how could she beg him to rest now, when Jernington had come
+out, when it was so vital to their interests that the opera should be
+finished as soon as possible! Besides, she was certain that even if she
+spoke Claude would not listen to her. Jernington, so he said, always
+gave him an impetus, always excited him. It was a keen pleasure to show
+a man of such deep knowledge what he had been doing, a keener pleasure
+still when he approved, when he said, in his German voice, "That goes!"
+And they had been trying over passages with instrumentalists who had
+been "unearthed," as Jernington expressed it, in Algiers. They had got
+hold of a horn player, had found another man who played the clarinet,
+the violin, and a third instrument.
+
+In fact, they were living for, and in, the opera. And Charmian, devoured
+by her secret ambition, had no heart to play a careful wife's part. She
+had the will to urge her man on. She had no will to hold him back.
+Afterward he could rest, he should rest--on the bed of his laurels.
+
+She smiled now when she thought of that.
+
+Presently she felt that some one was approaching her. She looked up and
+saw Jernington coming down the path, wiping his pale forehead with a
+silk handkerchief in which various colors seemed fortuitously combined.
+
+"Is the work over?" she cried out to him.
+
+He threw up one square-nailed white hand.
+
+"No. But for once he has got a passage all wrong. I have left him to
+correct it. He kicked me out, in fact!"
+
+Jernington threw back his head and laughed gutturally. His laugh always
+contradicted his eyes. They were romantic, but his laugh was prosaic.
+
+He sat down by Charmian and put his hands on his knees. One still
+grasped the handkerchief.
+
+"Dear Mr. Jernington, tell me!" she said. "You know so much. Claude says
+your knowledge is extraordinary. Isn't the opera fine?"
+
+Now Jernington was a specialist, and he was one of those men who cannot
+detach their minds from the subject in which they specialize in order to
+take a broad view. His vision was extraordinarily acute, but it was
+strictly limited. When Charmian spoke of the opera he believed he was
+thinking of the opera as a whole, whereas he was in reality only
+thinking about the orchestration of it.
+
+"It is superb!" he replied enthusiastically. "Never before have I had a
+pupil with such talent as your husband."
+
+With a rapid movement he put one hand to the back of his neck and softly
+rubbed his little roll of white flesh.
+
+"He has an instinct for orchestration such as I have found in no one
+else. Now, for example--"
+
+He flung himself into depths of orchestral knowledge, dragging Charmian
+with him. She was happily engulfed. When they emerged in about half an
+hour's time she again threw out a lure for general praise.
+
+"Then you really admire the opera as a whole? You think it undoubtedly
+fine, don't you?"
+
+Jernington wiped his perspiring face, his forehead, and, finally, his
+whole head and neck, manipulating the huge handkerchief in a masterly
+manner almost worthy of an expensive conjurer.
+
+"It is superb. When it is given, when the world knows that the great
+Heath studied with me--well, I shall have to take a studio as large as
+the Albert Hall, there will be such a rush of pupils. Do you know that
+his employment of the oboe in combination with the flute, the strings
+being divided--"
+
+And once more he plunged down into the depths of orchestral knowledge
+taking Charmian with him. He quoted Prout, he quoted Vincent d'Indy; he
+minutely compared passages in Elgar's second symphony with passages in
+Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony; he dissected the delicate orchestral
+effects in Debussy's _Nuages_ and _Fete Nocturne_, compared the modern
+French methods in orchestration with Richard Strauss's gigantic, and
+sometimes monstrous combinations. But again and again he returned to his
+pupil, Claude. As he talked his enthusiasm mounted. The little roll of
+flesh trembled as he emphatically moved his head. His voice grew
+harsher, more German. He untied and reknotted his flowing cravat, pulled
+up his boots with elastic sides, thrust his cuffs, which were not
+attached to his shirt, violently out of sight up his plump arms.
+
+Charmian could not doubt his admiration for the opera. It was expressed
+in a manner peculiar to Jernington that became almost epileptic, but it
+was undoubtedly sincere.
+
+When he left her and went back to Claude's workroom she was glowing with
+pride and happiness.
+
+"That funny old thing knows!" she thought. "He knows!"
+
+Jernington was usually called an old thing, although he was not yet
+forty.
+
+His departure was due about the twentieth of August, but when that day
+drew near Claude begged him to stay on till the end of the month.
+Charmian was secretly dismayed. She had news from Lake that his campaign
+on Claude's behalf had every prospect of success. Crayford was now at
+Divonne-les-Bains, but had invited Lake to join him in a motor tour as
+soon as his "cure"--by no means a severe one--was over.
+
+"That tour, Mrs. Charmian, as I'm a living man with good prospects, will
+end on the quay at Marseilles, and start again on the quay at Algiers.
+Crayford has tried to bring off a fresh deal with Sennier, but been
+beaten off by the pierrot in petticoats, as he calls the great
+Henriette. She asked for the earth, and all the planets and
+constellations besides. Now they are at daggers drawn. That's bully for
+us. Take out your bottom dollar, and bet it that I bring him over before
+September is ten days old."
+
+September--yes. But Lake was impulsive. He might hurry things, might
+arrive with the impresario sooner. Jernington must not be at
+Djenan-el-Maqui when he arrived. If Claude were found studying with a
+sort of professor Crayford would certainly get a wrong impression. It
+might just make the difference between the success of the great plan and
+its failure. Claude must present himself, or be presented by Lake as a
+master, not as a pupil.
+
+She must get rid of old Jernington as soon as possible.
+
+But it now became alarmingly manifest that old Jernington was in no
+hurry to go. He was one of those persons who arrive with great
+difficulty, but who find an even greater difficulty in bringing
+themselves to the point of departure. Never having been out of Europe
+before, it seemed that he was not unwilling to end his days in a
+tropical exile. He "felt" the heat terribly, but professed to like it,
+was charmed with the villa and the comfort of the life, and "really had
+no need to hurry away" now that he had definitely relinquished his
+annual holiday at Bury St. Edmunds.
+
+As Claude wished him to stay on, and had no suspicion that any plan was
+in the wind, Charmian found herself in a difficult position as the days
+went by and the end of August drew near. Her imagination revolved about
+all sorts of preposterous means for getting rid of the poor fellow, whom
+she honestly liked, and to whom she was grateful for his enthusiastic
+labors. She thought of making a hole in his mosquito net, to permit the
+entry of those marauders whom he dreaded; of casually mentioning that
+there had been cases suspiciously resembling Asiatic cholera in the
+Casbah of Algiers; of pretending to fall ill and saying that Claude must
+take her away for a change; even of getting Alston Lake to send a
+telegram to Jernington saying that his presence was urgently demanded in
+his native Suffolk. Had he a mother? Till now Charmian had never thought
+of probing into Jernington's family affairs. When, driven by stress of
+circumstances, she began to do so, she found that his mother had died
+almost before he was born. Indeed, his relatives seemed to be as few in
+number as they were robust in constitution.
+
+She dismissed the idea of the telegram. She even said to herself that of
+course she had never entertained it. But what was she to do?
+
+She tried to be a little cold to Jernington, thinking it might be
+possible to convey to him subtly the idea that perhaps his visit had
+lasted long enough, that his hostess had other plans in which his
+presence was not included.
+
+But Jernington was conscious of no subtleties except those connected
+with the employment of musical instruments. And Charmian found it almost
+impossible to be glacial to such a simple and warm-hearted creature. His
+very boots seemed to claim her cordiality with their unabashed elastic
+sides. The way in which he pushed his cuffs out of sight appealed to the
+goodness of her heart, although it displeased her aesthetic sense. She
+had to recognize the fact that old Jernington was one of those tiresome
+people you cannot be unkind to.
+
+Nevertheless she must get him out of the house and out of Africa.
+
+If he stuck to the plan of leaving them at the end of August there would
+probably be no need of diplomacy, or of forcible ejection; but it had
+become obvious to Charmian that the last thing old Jernington was
+capable of doing was just that sticking to a plan.
+
+"Do you mean to sail on the _Marechal Bugeaud_ or the _Ville d'Alger_?"
+she asked him.
+
+"I wonder," he replied artlessly. "In my idea Berlioz was not really the
+founder of modern orchestration as some have asserted. Your husband and
+I--"
+
+She could not stop him. She began to feel almost as if she hated the
+delicious orchestral family. Jernington had a special passion for the
+oboe. Charmian found herself absurdly feeling against that rustic and
+Arcadian charmer an enmity such as she had scarcely ever experienced
+against a human being. One night she spoke unkindly, almost with a
+warmth of malignity, about the oboe. Jernington sprang amorously to its
+defense. She tried to quarrel with him, but was disarmed by his fidelity
+to the object of his affections. She was too much a woman to rail
+against fidelity.
+
+The 30th of August arrived. In the afternoon of that day she received
+the following telegram from Alston Lake:
+
+    "Crayford and I start motor trip to-morrow he thinks Germany have no
+    fear all right Marseilles or I Dutchman.--LAKE."
+
+As she read this telegram Charmian knew that the two men would come to
+Algiers. She believed in Alston Lake. He had an extraordinary faculty
+for carrying things through; and Crayford was fond of him. Crayford had
+been kind, generous to the boy, and loved him as a man may love his own
+good action. Lake, as he had said in private to Charmian, could "do a
+lot with dear old Crayford."
+
+He would certainly bring Crayford to Mustapha. Old Jernington must go.
+
+The 31st of August dawned and began to fade.
+
+Charmian felt desperate. She resolved to tackle Claude on the matter.
+Old Jernington would never understand unless she said to him, "Go! For
+Heaven's sake, go!" And even then he would probably think that she was
+saying the reverse of what she meant, in an effort after that type of
+playful humor which, for all she knew, perhaps still prevailed in his
+native Suffolk. She had bent Claude to her purposes before. She must
+bend him to her purpose now.
+
+"Claudie," she said, "you know what an old dear I think Jernington,
+don't you?"
+
+Claude looked up at her with rather searching eyes. She had come into
+his workroom at sunset. All day she had been considering what would be
+the best thing to do. Old Jernington was strolling in the garden smoking
+a very German pipe after having been "at it" for many hours.
+
+"Jernington?"
+
+"Yes, old Jernington."
+
+"Of course he's an excellent fellow. What about him?"
+
+She sat down delicately. She was looking very calm, and her movement was
+very quiet.
+
+"Well, I'm beginning almost to hate him!" she remarked quietly.
+
+"What do you mean, Charmian?"
+
+"If I tell you are you going to get angry?"
+
+"Why should I get angry?"
+
+"You are looking very fierce."
+
+He altered his expression.
+
+"It's the work," he muttered. "When one grinds as I do one does feel
+fierce."
+
+"That's why I'm beginning to--well, love Mr. Jernington a little less
+than I used to. He's almost killing you."
+
+"Jernington!"
+
+"Yes. It's got to stop."
+
+Her voice and manner had quite changed. She spoke now with earnest and
+very serious decision.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The work, Claude. I've seen for some time that unless you take a short
+holiday you are going to break down."
+
+"Well, but you have always encouraged me to work!"
+
+She noticed a faint suspicion in his expression and voice.
+
+"I know. I've been too eager, too keen on the opera. I haven't realized
+what a strain you are going through. But--it's just like a woman, I'm
+afraid!--now I see another urging you on, I see plainly. It may be
+jealousy--"
+
+"You jealous of old Jernington!"
+
+"I believe I am a tiny bit. But, apart really from that, you are looking
+dreadful these last few days. When you asked Jernington to prolong his
+visit I was horrified. You see, he's come to it all fresh. And then he's
+not creating. That's the tiring work. It's all very well helping and
+criticising."
+
+"That's very true," Claude said.
+
+He sighed heavily. She had told him that he was very tired, and he felt
+that he was very tired.
+
+"It is a great strain," he added.
+
+"It has got to stop, Claude."
+
+There was a little silence. Then she said:
+
+"These extra months have made a great difference, haven't they?"
+
+"Enormous."
+
+"You've got on very far?"
+
+"Farther than I had thought would be possible."
+
+Her heart bounded. But she only said:
+
+"There's a boat to Marseilles the day after to-morrow. Old Jernington is
+going by it."
+
+"Oh, but Charmian, we can't pack the dear old fellow--"
+
+"The dear old fellow is going by that boat, Claudie."
+
+"But what a tyrant you are!"
+
+"I've been selfish. My keenness about your work has blinded me.
+Jernington has made me see. We've been two slave-drivers. It can't go
+on. If he could stay and be different--but he can't. He's a marvel of
+learning, but he has only one subject--orchestration. You've got to
+forget that for a little. So Jernington must go. Dear old boy! When I
+see your pale cheeks and your burning eyes I--I--"
+
+Tears came into her eyes. From beneath the trickster the woman arose.
+Her own words touched her suddenly, made her understand how Claude had
+sacrificed himself to his work, and so to her ambition. She got up and
+turned away.
+
+"Old Jernington shall go by the _Marechal Bugeaud_," she said, in a
+voice that slightly shook.
+
+And by the _Marechal Bugeaud_ old Jernington did go.
+
+So ingeniously did Charmian manage things that he believed he went of
+his own accord, indeed that it had been his "idea" to go. She told
+Claude to leave it to her and not to say one word. Then she went to
+Jernington, and began to talk of his extraordinary influence over her
+husband. He soon pulled at his boots, thrust his cuffs up his arms, and
+showed other unmistakable symptoms of gratification.
+
+"You can do anything with him," she said presently. "I wish I could."
+
+Jernington protested with guttural exclamations.
+
+"He's killing himself," she resumed. "And I have to sit by and see it,
+and say nothing."
+
+"Killing himself!"
+
+Jernington, who believed in women, was shocked.
+
+"With overwork. He's on the verge of a complete breakdown. And it's you,
+Mr. Jernington, it's all you!"
+
+Jernington was more than shocked. His gratification had vanished. A
+piteous, almost a guilty expression, came into his large fair face.
+
+"Ach!" he exclaimed. "What have I done?"
+
+"Oh, it's not your fault. But Claude almost worships you. He thinks
+there is no one like you. He's afraid to lose a moment of time while you
+are with him. Your learning, your enthusiasm excite him till he's beside
+himself. He can't rest with such a worker as you in the house, and no
+wonder. You are an inspiration to him. Who could rest with such an
+influence near? What are we to do? Unless he has a complete holiday he
+is going to break completely down. Do watch him to-day! Notice! See for
+yourself!"
+
+Jernington, much impressed--for Charmian's despair had been very
+definite indeed, "oleographic in type," as she acknowledged to
+herself--did notice, did see for himself, and inquired innocently of
+Charmian what was to be done.
+
+"I leave that to you," she answered, fixing her eyes almost hypnotically
+upon him.
+
+Secretly she was willing him to go. She was saying in her mind: "Go! Go!
+Go!" was striving to "suggestion" him.
+
+"Perhaps--" he paused, and pulled his cuffs down over his large, pale
+hands.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps I had better take him away for a little holiday."
+
+She could have slapped him. But she only said eagerly:
+
+"To England, you mean! Why not? There's a boat going the day after
+to-morrow take your passage on the _Marechal Bugeaud_. Don't say a word
+to Claude. But and leave the rest to me. I know how to manage Claude.
+And if I get a little help from you!"
+
+Old Jernington took his passage on the _Marechal Bugeaud_ and left the
+rest to Charmian, with this result. Late the next night, when they were
+all going to bed, she whispered to him, "I've put a note in your room.
+Don't say a word to him!" She touched her lips. Much intrigued by all
+this feminine diplomacy Jernington went to his room, and found the
+following note under a candlestick. (Charmian had a sense of the
+dramatic.)
+
+     "DEAR MR. JERNINGTON,--Claude _won't_ go. It's no use for
+     me to say anything. He is in a highly nervous state brought on by
+     this overwork. I see the only thing is to let him have his own way
+     in everything. Don't even mention that we had thought of this
+     holiday in England. The least thing excites him. And as he _won't_
+     go, what is the use of speaking of it? If I can get him to join you
+     later well and good. For the moment we can only give in and be
+     discreet. You have been such a dear to us both. The house will
+     seem quite different without you. _Not a word to Claude. Burn
+     this!_
+                                                          "C. H."
+
+And old Jernington burnt it in the flame of the candle, and went away
+alone on the _Marechal Bugeaud_ the next morning, with apologies to
+Claude.
+
+The house did seem to Charmian quite different without him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Two days later, on the 4th of September, Charmian had got rid of Claude
+as well as of old Jernington, and, in a condition of expectation that
+was tinged agreeably with triumph, was awaiting the arrival of important
+visitors. She had received a telegram from Lake:
+
+"Have got him into the Chateaux country going on to Orange hope on hope
+ever--ALSTON."
+
+And she knew that the fateful motor would inevitably find its way to the
+quay at Marseilles.
+
+She had had no difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington
+had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked
+from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt
+as if in the little house which had seen his work he could not rest.
+
+"Go away," Charmian said to him. "Take a couple of weeks' complete
+holiday."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"But I am not going."
+
+He looked surprised. But she noticed that he did not look displeased.
+Nevertheless, thinking of the future and remembering Alston Lake's
+advice, she continued:
+
+"You need a complete change of people as well as of place. Is there
+anyone left in Algiers?"
+
+"If you don't come," he interrupted her quickly, "I'd much rather go
+quite alone. It will rest me much more."
+
+She saw by the look in his eyes that this sudden prospect of loneliness
+appealed to him strongly. He moved his shoulders, stretched out his
+arms.
+
+"Yes, it will do me good. You are right, Charmian. It is sweet of you to
+think for me as you do."
+
+And he bent down and kissed her.
+
+Then he hurried to his room, packed a very small trunk, and took the
+first train, as she had suggested, to Hammam R'rirha.
+
+"If you move from there mind you let me know your address," she said, as
+he was starting.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"I want always to know just where you are."
+
+"Of course I shall let you know. But I think I shall stay quietly at
+Hammam R'rirha."
+
+Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came:
+
+     "Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the _Timgad_
+     Hurrah--ALSTON."
+
+She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she
+hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they
+would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more
+than well. The omens were good. She saw in them a tendency. Success was
+in the air. She did not doubt, she would not doubt, that Crayford's
+coming meant his eventual acceptance of the opera. The combination of
+Alston and herself was a strong one. They knew their own minds; they
+were both enthusiasts; they both had strong wills. Crayford was devoted
+to his protege, and he admired her. She had seen admiration in his eyes
+the first time they had looked at her. Madame Sennier had surely never
+worked for her husband more strenuously and more effectively than she,
+Charmian, had worked for Claude; and she would work more strenuously,
+more effectively, during the next few days. The libretto! She snatched
+it up and sat down once more to study it. But she could not sit still,
+and she took it down with her into the garden. There she paced up and
+down, reading it aloud, reciting the strongest passages in it without
+looking at the words. She nearly knew the whole of it by heart.
+
+When the day came on which the _Timgad_ was due she was in a fever of
+excitement. She went about the little house re-arranging the furniture,
+putting flowers in all the vases. Of course Mr. Crayford and Alston
+would stay at a hotel. But no doubt they would spend a good deal of time
+at the villa. She would insist on their dining with her that night.
+
+"Jeanne! Jeanne!"
+
+She hurried toward the kitchen. It occurred to her that she was not
+supposed to know that the two men were coming. Oh, but of course, when
+he found them there, Claude would understand that naturally Alston had
+telegraphed from Marseilles. So she took "La Grande Jeanne" into her
+confidence without a scruple. They must have a perfect little dinner, a
+dinner for three such as had never yet been prepared in Mustapha!
+
+She and Jeanne were together for more than an hour. Afterward she went
+out to watch for the steamer from a point of vantage on the Boulevard
+Bleu. Just after one o'clock she saw it gliding toward the harbor over
+the glassy sea. Then she went slowly home in the glaring heat, rested,
+put on a white gown, very simple but quite charming, and a large white
+hat, and went out into the Arab court with a book to await their
+arrival.
+
+It was half-past four when a sound struck on her ears, a loud and
+trembling chord, a buzz, the rattle of a "cut-out." The blessed noises
+drew near. They were certainly in the little by-road which led to the
+house. They ceased. She did not move, but sat where she was with a
+fast-beating heart.
+
+"Well, this is a cute little snuggery and no mistake!"
+
+It was Crayford's voice in the court of the bougainvillea.
+
+She bent her head and pored over her book. In a moment Alston Lake's
+voice said, in French:
+
+"In the garden! No, don't call her, Bibi, we will find her!"
+
+"Look well on the stage that boy!" said Crayford's voice. "No mistake at
+all about its being picturesque over here."
+
+Then the two men came in sight in the sunshine. Instantly Alston said,
+as he took off his Panama hat:
+
+"You got my wire from Marseilles, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I was expecting you! But I didn't know when. Mr. Crayford, how
+kind of you to come over here in September! No one ever does."
+
+She had got up rather languidly and was holding out her hand.
+
+"Guess it's the proper time to come," said Crayford, squeezing her hand
+with his dried-up palm. "See a bit of the real thing! I don't believe
+in tourist seasons at all. Tourists always choose the wrong time, seems
+to me."
+
+By the look in his eyes as he glanced around him Charmian saw that he
+was under the spell of Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+"You must have tea, iced drinks, whatever you like," she said. "I'm all
+alone--as you see."
+
+"What's that?" said Crayford.
+
+"My husband is away."
+
+Crayford's lips pursed themselves. For a moment he looked like a man who
+finds he has been "had." In that moment Charmian knew that his real
+reason in "running over" to North Africa had certainly been the opera.
+She did not suppose he had acknowledged this to Lake, or ever would
+acknowledge it to anyone. But she was quite certain of it.
+
+"Gone to England?" asked Crayford, carelessly.
+
+"Oh, no. He's been working too hard, and run away by himself for a
+little holiday to a place near here, Hammam R'rirha. He'll be sorry to
+miss you. I know how busy you always are, so I suppose you'll only stay
+a day or two."
+
+Crayford's keen eyes suddenly fastened upon her.
+
+"Yes, I haven't too much time," he remarked drily.
+
+They all sat down, and again Crayford looked around, stretching out his
+short and muscular legs.
+
+"Cute, and no mistake!" he observed, with a sigh, as he pulled at the
+tiny beard. "Think of living here now! Pity I'm not a composer, eh,
+Alston?"
+
+He ended with a laugh.
+
+"And what's your husband been up to, Mrs. Heath?" he continued, settling
+himself more comfortably in his big chair, and pushing his white Homburg
+hat backward to leave his brown forehead bare to a tiny breeze which
+spoke softly, very gently, of the sea. "You've been over here for a big
+bunch of Sundays, Alston tells me, week-days too."
+
+"Oh--" She seemed to be hesitating.
+
+Alston's boyish eyes twinkled with appreciation.
+
+"Well, we came here--we wanted to be quiet."
+
+"You've got out of sight of Broadway, that's certain."
+
+Tea and iced drinks were brought out. They talked of casual matters.
+The softness of late afternoon, warm, scented, exotic, dreamed in the
+radiant air. And Crayford said:
+
+"It's cute! It's cute!"
+
+He had removed his hat now and almost lay back in his chair. Presently
+he said:
+
+"Seems to me years since I've rested like this, Alston!"
+
+"I believe it is many years," said Lake, with a little satisfied laugh.
+"I've never seen you do it before."
+
+"'Cepting the cure. And that don't amount to anything."
+
+"Stay and dine, won't you?" said Charmian. "If you're not bored."
+
+"Bored!" said Crayford.
+
+"We'll dine just as we are. I'll go in and see the cook about it."
+
+"Very good of you I'm sure," said Crayford. "But I don't want to put you
+out."
+
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"The Excelsior," said Lake.
+
+"Right down in the town. You must stay. It is cooler here."
+
+She got up and went slowly into the house.
+
+"Stunning figure she's got and no mistake!" observed Crayford, following
+her with his eyes. "But I say, Alston, what about this fellow Heath? Now
+I'm over here I ought to have a look at what he's up to. She seemed to
+want to avoid the subject, I thought. D'you think he's writing on
+commission? Or perhaps someone's seen the music. The Metropolitan
+crowd--"
+
+They fell into a long discussion on opera prospects, during which Alston
+Lake succeeded in giving Crayford an impression that there might be some
+secret in connection with Claude Heath's opera. This set the impresario
+bristling. He was like a terrier at the opening of a rat-hole.
+
+Charmian's little dinner that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a
+seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his
+armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he
+was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with.
+That night it came rather near to the surface of him. As he stepped out
+into the court to take coffee, with an excellent Havana in his mouth,
+as he saw the deep and limpid sky glittering with strong, almost fierce
+stars, and farther fainter stars, he heaved a long sigh.
+
+"Bully!" he breathed. "Bully, and no mistake!"
+
+Exactly how it all came about Charmian did not remember afterward;
+Alston, she thought, must have prepared the way with masterly ingenuity.
+Or perhaps she--no, she was not conscious of having brought it about
+deliberately. The fact was this. At ten o'clock that night, sitting with
+a light behind her, Charmian began to read the libretto of the opera to
+the two men who were smoking near the fountain.
+
+It had seemed inevitable. The hour was propitious. They were all "worked
+up." The night, perhaps, played upon them after "La Grande Jeanne" had
+done her part. Crayford was obviously in his softest, most receptive
+mood. Alston was expansive, was in a gloriously hopeful condition. The
+opera was mentioned again. By whom? Surely by the hour or the night! It
+had to be mentioned, and inevitably was. Crayford was sympathetic, spoke
+almost with emotion--a liqueur-glass of excellent old brandy in his
+hand--of the young talented ones who must bear the banner of art bravely
+before the coming generations.
+
+"I love the young!" he said. "It is my proudest boast to seek out and
+bring forward the young. Aren't it, Alston?"
+
+Influenced perhaps by the satiny texture of the old brandy, in
+combination with the scented and jewelled night, he spoke as if he
+existed only for the benefit of the young, never thought about
+money-making, or business propositions. Charmian was touched. Alston
+also seemed moved. Claude was young. Crayford spoke of him, of his
+talent. Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be,
+thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could
+she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner,
+when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were
+centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which
+only comes on a night of nights?
+
+The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or
+did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the
+definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each
+other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was
+able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to
+"come about of itself."
+
+Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of,
+Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and
+applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as
+only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a
+rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
+We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder
+for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's
+agreeable voice.
+
+Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
+The night was so vast, so starry and still, that--as he afterward said
+to himself--"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had
+not studied with Madame Thenant for nothing. This was an almost supreme
+moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another
+opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame
+Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before
+her. She took her feet off the stool--she was no odalisque to be
+pampered with footstools and cushions--and she let herself go.
+
+Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:
+
+"That's the best libretto since _Carmen_, and I know something about
+libretti."
+
+Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:
+
+"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"
+
+Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was
+incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.
+
+"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed
+to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and
+yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted
+him--"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from
+wherever he is?"
+
+With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.
+
+"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But--but I think he needs the holiday he
+is taking badly."
+
+"Been working hard has he, sweating over the music?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Young 'uns must sweat if they're to get there. That's all right. Aren't
+it, Alston?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"Can't you get him back?" continued Crayford.
+
+The softness, the almost luxurious abandon of look and manner was
+dropping away from him. The man who has "interests," and who seldom
+forgets them for more than a very few minutes, began to reappear.
+
+"Well, I might. But--why?"
+
+"Don't he want to see his chum Alston?"
+
+"Certainly; he always likes to see Mr. Lake."
+
+"Well then?"
+
+"The only thing is he needs complete rest."
+
+"And so do I, but d'you think I'm going to take it? Not I! It's the
+resters get left. You might telegraph that to your husband, and say it
+comes straight from me."
+
+He got up from his chair, and threw away the stump of the fourth cigar
+he had enjoyed that night.
+
+"We've no room for resters in New York City."
+
+"I'm sure you haven't. But my husband doesn't happen to belong to New
+York City."
+
+As they were leaving Djenan-el-Maqui, after Mr. Crayford had had a long
+drink, and while he was speaking to his chauffeur, who had the bonnet of
+the car up, Alston Lake whispered to Charmian:
+
+"Don't wire to old Claude. Keep it up. You are masterly, quite masterly.
+Hulloa! anything wrong with the car?"
+
+When they buzzed away Charmian stood for a moment in the drive till
+silence fell. She was tired, but how happily tired!
+
+And to think that Claude knew nothing, nothing of it all! Some day she
+would have to tell him how hard she had worked for him! She opened her
+lips and drew into her lungs the warm air of the night. She was not a
+"rester." She would not surely "get left."
+
+Pierre yawned rather loudly behind her.
+
+"Oh, Pierre!" she said, turning quickly, startled. "It is terribly late.
+Stay in bed to-morrow. Don't get up early. _Bonne nuit._"
+
+"_Bonne nuit, madame._"
+
+On the following day she received a note from Alston.
+
+     "DEAR MRS. CHARMIAN,--You are a wonder. No one on earth
+     could have managed him better. You might have known him from the
+     cradle--yours, of course, not his! I'm taking him around to-day. He
+     wants to go to Djenan-el-Maqui, I can see that. But I'm keeping him
+     off it. Lie low and mum's the word as to Claude.--Your fellow
+     conspirator,
+                                                        "ALSTON."
+
+It was difficult to "lie low." But she obeyed and spent the long day
+alone. No one came to see her. Toward evening she felt deserted,
+presently even strangely depressed. As she dined, as she sat out
+afterward in the court with Caroline reposing on her skirt in a curved
+attitude of supreme contentment, she recalled the excitement and emotion
+of the preceding night. She had read well. She had done her part for
+Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of
+herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be
+produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she
+strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had
+the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long
+had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian
+could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone
+with Claude. Now they were a _menage a trois_. She recalled the
+beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable
+they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The
+river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it was flowing.
+
+Surely so much thought, care, labor and love could not be bestowed on a
+thing in vain; surely the opera, child of so many hopes, bearer of such
+a load of ambition, could not "go down"? She tried to regain her
+strength of anticipation. But all the evening she felt depressed. If
+only Alston would come in for five minutes! Perhaps he would. She
+looked at the tiny watch which hung by her side at the end of a thin
+gold chain. The hands pointed to half-past nine. He might come yet. She
+listened. The night, one of a long succession of marvellous African
+nights, was perfectly still. The servants within the villa made no
+sound. Caroline heaved a faint sigh and stirred, turning to push her
+long nose into a tempting fold of Charmian's skirt. But, midway in her
+movement she paused, lifted her head, stared at the darkness with her
+small yellow eyes, and uttered a muffled bark which was like an inquiry.
+Her nose was twitching.
+
+"What is it, Caroline?" said Charmian.
+
+She lifted the dog on to her knees.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Caroline barked faintly again.
+
+"Someone is coming," thought Charmian. "Alston is coming."
+
+Almost directly she heard the sound of wheels, and Caroline jumping down
+with her lopetty movement, delivered herself up to a succession of calm
+barks. She was a gentle individual, and never showed any great
+animation, even in such a crisis as this. The sound of wheels ceased,
+and in a moment a voice called:
+
+"Charmian! Where are you?"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+She felt that her face grew hot, though she was alone, and she had
+spoken the name to herself, for herself.
+
+"I'm out here on the terrace!"
+
+She felt astonished, guilty. She had thought that he would only come
+when she summoned him, perhaps to-morrow, that he would learn by
+telegram of the arrival of Crayford and Alston. Now she would have to
+tell him.
+
+He came out into the court, looking very tall in the night.
+
+"Are you surprised?"
+
+He kissed her.
+
+"Very! Very surprised!"
+
+"I thought I had had enough holiday, that I would get back. I only
+decided to-day, quite suddenly."
+
+"Then didn't you enjoy your holiday?"
+
+"I thought I was going to. I tried to. I even pretended to myself that I
+was enjoying it very much. But it was all subterfuge, I suppose, for
+to-day I found I must come back. The fact is I can't keep away from the
+opera."
+
+Charmian was conscious of a sharp pang. It felt like a pang of jealousy.
+
+"Have you had any dinner?" she asked, in a rather constrained voice.
+
+"Yes. I dined at Gruber's."
+
+She wondered why, but she did not say so.
+
+"I nearly stayed the night in town. I felt--it seemed so absurd my
+rushing back like this."
+
+He ended with a little laugh.
+
+"Who do you think is here?" she said.
+
+"Here?"
+
+He glanced round.
+
+"I mean in Algiers."
+
+He looked at her with searching eyes.
+
+"Someone we know well?"
+
+"Two people."
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"No--guess!"
+
+"Women? Men?"
+
+"Men."
+
+"Sennier?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Max Elliot?"
+
+"No. One is--Alston Lake."
+
+"Alston? But why isn't he up here, then?"
+
+"He has brought someone with him."
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"Jacob Crayford."
+
+"Crayford here? What has he come here for?"
+
+"He's taking a holiday motoring."
+
+"But to come to Algiers in summer!"
+
+"He goes everywhere, and can't choose his season. He's far too busy."
+
+"To be sure. Has he been to see you?"
+
+"Yes; he dined here yesterday and stayed till past midnight. He wants
+to see you. I meant to telegraph to you almost directly."
+
+"Wants to see me?"
+
+"Yes. Claude, last night I read the libretto of the opera to him and
+Alston."
+
+He was silent. It was dark in the court. She could not see his face
+clearly enough to know whether he was pleased or displeased.
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"I think you sound as if you minded."
+
+"Well? What did Crayford think of it?"
+
+"He said, 'It's the best libretto since _Carmen_.'"
+
+"It is a good libretto."
+
+"He was enthusiastic. Claude"--she put her hand on his arm--"he wants to
+hear your music."
+
+"Has he said so?"
+
+"Not exactly; not in so many words; but he seemed very much put out when
+he found you weren't here. And, after he had heard the libretto, he
+suggested my telegraphing to you to come straight back."
+
+"Funny I should have come without your telegraphing."
+
+"It almost seems--" She paused.
+
+"What?"
+
+"As if you had been led to come back of your own accord, as if you had
+felt you ought to be here."
+
+"Are you glad?" he said.
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"Did you mean--"
+
+"Claude," she said, taking a resolution, "I don't think it would be wise
+for us to seem too eager about the opera with Mr. Crayford."
+
+"But I have never even thought--"
+
+"No, no. But now he's here, and thinks so much of the libretto, and
+wants to see you, it would be absurd of us to pretend that he could not
+be of great use to us. I mean, to pretend to ourselves. Of course if he
+would take it it would be too splendid."
+
+"He never will."
+
+"Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera."
+
+"I'm not a Sennier unfortunately."
+
+"What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed,
+almost angrily.
+
+She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin
+their prospects.
+
+"O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a
+little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can--"
+
+She pulled herself up sharply.
+
+"I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much,
+and then you speak like this."
+
+Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this
+breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude.
+
+"My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I
+don't know why."
+
+But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition
+was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something,
+was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she
+had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget
+Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have
+pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her.
+
+"I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself."
+
+Claude put his arm round her gently.
+
+"I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very
+aggravating," he said. "But--"
+
+He stopped, said nothing more.
+
+"Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed--"your own child. Then
+others will believe in it, too. Alston does."
+
+She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes.
+
+"And Jacob Crayford shall."
+
+After a moment she added:
+
+"If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things."
+
+"How could I spoil my own music?" he asked.
+
+But she only answered:
+
+"Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"
+
+Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow
+linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver
+cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into
+the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.
+
+"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.
+
+"Yaw."
+
+Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge
+Havana.
+
+"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up.
+"Of course she telegraphed him to come."
+
+"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.
+
+"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.
+
+He sat down and crossed his legs.
+
+"No. But even you can't see what isn't."
+
+"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at
+Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the
+big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well,
+that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent
+little thing, that's all."
+
+Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable
+expression.
+
+"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his
+life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to
+Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to
+hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to
+get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it.
+See?"
+
+He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very
+apparent.
+
+"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.
+
+"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business.
+You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car
+to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can
+tell her a good bit depends on it."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same
+half-humorous dryness.
+
+"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?"
+said Alston, with bland formality.
+
+"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."
+
+At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to
+distort slightly one corner of his mouth.
+
+Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She
+was in a state of great excitement.
+
+"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it
+comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in
+such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel
+almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be
+guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him?
+Just think of those two shut in together!"
+
+As Alston got into the car she repeated:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+"_Allez au Diable!_" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a
+Frenchman.
+
+"_Bien, m'sieu!_"
+
+"And--" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours
+to get there."
+
+"_Tres bien, m'sieu._"
+
+"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off.
+"Knows how to time things!"
+
+It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.
+
+"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.
+
+"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."
+
+"Better dine with me."
+
+She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.
+
+"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"
+
+"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."
+
+"But what will people think?"
+
+"What they always do, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, but what's that?"
+
+"I've wondered for years!"
+
+He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.
+
+At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on
+returning home.
+
+"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.
+
+Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.
+
+"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."
+
+"Yes, you may."
+
+As they drove off she exclaimed:
+
+"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do
+you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own
+house."
+
+"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."
+
+"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."
+
+"But if he doesn't stop his?"
+
+"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel
+so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same
+on mine."
+
+"Well, but we meet everything on the--"
+
+"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us
+on any side."
+
+Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.
+
+They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the
+Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:
+
+"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."
+
+"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"
+
+Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a
+violent push in the small of his back.
+
+"Stop! Stop!"
+
+He pulled up the horses with a jerk.
+
+"Hello!" said Crayford.
+
+He took off his hat.
+
+"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.
+
+"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.
+
+They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by
+the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big
+cigar.
+
+"Have you dined?" said Alston.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Have you--" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the
+opera all this time?"
+
+"Yaw."
+
+He blew out a smoke ring.
+
+"Hearing it and talking things over."
+
+Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.
+
+"Then you--then I suppose--"
+
+"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full
+as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will
+tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"
+
+"No. I'm almost there."
+
+"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"
+
+"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All
+the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of
+times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."
+
+She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was
+now burning with impatience to be with Claude.
+
+"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses
+moved forward.
+
+"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that
+quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."
+
+He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did
+not attempt to make him talk.
+
+When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little
+dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning
+her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at
+the cold chicken he was eating.
+
+"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"
+
+She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the
+dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"
+
+Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which
+he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something
+else.
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"
+
+"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean,
+of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've
+composed, I mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he say? What did he think of it?"
+
+"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."
+
+"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose we did."
+
+"What did he say, then?"
+
+"All sorts of things."
+
+"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."
+
+"Well, he liked some of it."
+
+"Only some?"
+
+"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of
+alterations."
+
+"Where? Which part?"
+
+"I should have to show you."
+
+"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can
+easily do that without showing me to-night."
+
+"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene--"
+
+"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy
+enough. You could do that in a day."
+
+"Do you think one has only to sit down?"
+
+"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when
+you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"
+
+"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."
+
+"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And
+if you do what he says, what then?"
+
+"How d'you mean?"
+
+"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"
+
+"He didn't commit himself."
+
+"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered
+something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."
+
+"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great
+opportunities for new scenic effects."
+
+"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he
+would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"
+
+She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been
+working for, waiting--longing for, for months and years! Caroline!
+Caroline!"
+
+Caroline hastily indicated her presence.
+
+"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces!
+There! And the sugary part, too!"
+
+"You'll make her ill."
+
+"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think,
+you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet
+I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it
+would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"
+
+"I don't deny it. But--"
+
+"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away
+your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's
+pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others
+shall know too. The whole world shall know."
+
+He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a
+sobriety that almost made her despair:
+
+"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be
+able to consent to make changes in the opera."
+
+Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath
+on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other.
+It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last
+stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much
+alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with
+a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his
+success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his
+work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of
+his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever
+does, about the heels of tragedy.
+
+Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and
+before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States,
+and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one
+circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other
+delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music
+halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in
+halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first
+men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile
+with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath
+the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had
+been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that
+had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And
+this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling
+its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the
+inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always
+wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class
+artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of
+New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."
+
+Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on
+Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in
+productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the
+staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and
+had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in
+the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of
+dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was
+prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last.
+He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a
+profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever.
+Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned
+a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he
+would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less
+than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often
+carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win
+out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him
+inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises
+as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often
+led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity.
+He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood,"
+and was for ever on the look-out for it.
+
+He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.
+
+But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a
+long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names
+he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But
+people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not
+touch them.
+
+Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was
+passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his
+side because of gratitude, and in expectation.
+
+The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was
+absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his
+ideas.
+
+"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's
+to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the
+conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if
+the darned thing's a failure."
+
+There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside,
+the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered
+with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue
+could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the
+calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly,
+unexpectedly.
+
+Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little
+rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him,
+bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences
+it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And
+from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in
+concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips
+to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes
+travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.
+
+"Then if we--I mean if my husband does what you wish, you _will_ spend
+thousands over it?" she said, "you _will_ produce it, give it its
+chance?"
+
+Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything
+definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time
+over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But
+he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which
+could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole
+affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude
+dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face
+of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt
+that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a
+successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the
+face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate
+for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within
+him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that
+perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent.
+Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not
+strike it down into the dust of despair.
+
+Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that
+was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth,
+looked at Charmian, and said:
+
+"Yah!"
+
+Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.
+But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back,
+beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.
+
+"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going
+to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the
+only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and
+bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever
+trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get
+down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or
+not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.
+I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your
+getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and
+your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you
+write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.
+You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the
+best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start,
+but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you
+to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though
+you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the
+center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of
+feet above it."
+
+"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.
+
+"Ah!" breathed Charmian.
+
+Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he
+twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably
+thought Napoleonic.
+
+"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and
+my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"--his tone was
+changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost
+paternal--"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big
+success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger--eh, little
+lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"
+
+"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.
+
+His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of
+the room, out of the villa, to rush away--away into some desert place,
+and to be alone.
+
+"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."
+
+"I can't help--how would you have me look?"
+
+"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"
+
+"Claudie, we all only want--"
+
+"I know--I know!"
+
+He clenched his wet hands.
+
+"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
+
+"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what
+we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in
+this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell--don't mind me, little
+lady! I'll stop right there!--we're getting on to something that's going
+to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about--'s going to
+astonish--the--world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"
+
+And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made
+no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather
+feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the
+tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were
+moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when
+the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it
+glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this
+opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own
+consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his
+own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be
+really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he
+had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that
+narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly
+what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all
+his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.
+
+And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm--a genuine
+enthusiasm--of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be
+carried on by their hopes.
+
+As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where
+Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every
+day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and
+business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude
+had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre
+eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The
+more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and
+interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out
+and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.
+
+"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or
+"that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"--thought of by himself--"makes
+your opera a different thing."
+
+And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he
+would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it
+off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he
+reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded
+came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young
+people.
+
+"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got
+hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and
+I'll make him another Battistini. See here"--and he turned sharply to
+Claude--"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could
+easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why,
+it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I
+wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes
+first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But
+the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the
+opera."
+
+That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude
+rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he,
+the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of
+form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite
+shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all.
+But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as
+strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in
+hand.
+
+"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.
+
+Claude was tempted to reply:
+
+"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."
+
+But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with
+Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He
+admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities,
+which delighted her.
+
+"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never
+met an Englishwoman like her!"
+
+Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man,
+recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated
+before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She
+felt almost as if she were a creator.
+
+"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."
+
+While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised
+by Crayford--and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of
+those about him, scourged to his work by their desires--Lake studied the
+baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian
+"put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."
+
+"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I
+can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."
+
+"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.
+
+"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he
+answered. "Now, see here--"
+
+They plunged deep into the libretto.
+
+Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the
+opera.
+
+"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs.
+I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."
+
+That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian
+went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of
+odd people.
+
+"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.
+
+And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls.
+They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other
+nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to
+New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who
+had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the
+spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.
+
+"Claude"--the composer was Claude to him now--"can write in something
+weird to go with it," he said.
+
+And Charmian of course agreed.
+
+It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era
+Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully
+all the changes which Crayford demanded.
+
+"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.
+
+"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when
+I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to
+think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the
+changes. I can see that."
+
+"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the
+chance you are offering him."
+
+"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."
+
+"He realizes it."
+
+"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."
+
+"I won't tell a soul."
+
+"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude
+against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for
+the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's
+going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is
+expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"--Charmian
+thrilled at that word--"just about the same time, a day or two before,
+or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or
+the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been
+seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what
+opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to
+run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night
+stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till
+every note in his score's in its place."
+
+"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."
+
+"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from
+what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the
+writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a
+scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed
+everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,'
+I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have
+to bring him over."
+
+"Of course! Of course!"
+
+"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like
+old bones."
+
+He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a
+grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:
+
+"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it
+if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."
+
+He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:
+
+"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it,
+though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's
+a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish
+of it."
+
+"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.
+
+From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must
+be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just
+finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the
+small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room
+on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
+
+"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.
+
+"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window,
+Claudie."
+
+"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."
+
+He spoke almost irritably, like a man whose nerves were tired. But
+Charmian did not seem to notice it. She looked bright, resolute,
+dominant, as she replied in her clear voice:
+
+"Let it come in. I like to hear it. It is the voice of the world we are
+here to conquer. Don't look at me like that, dear old boy, but open the
+window. The air will do you good. You're tired. I shouldn't have allowed
+you to work during the voyage."
+
+"I had to work."
+
+"Well, very soon you'll be able to rest, and on laurels."
+
+Claude went to open the big window, pulling aside the blind, while
+Charmian lighted a cigarette, and curled herself up on the padded sofa.
+And as, in a moment, the roar of the gigantic city swelled in a fierce
+crescendo, she leaned forward with the cigarette in her hand, listening
+intently, half smiling, with an eager light in her eyes.
+
+"What a city it is!" she said, as Claude turned and came toward her. "It
+makes London seem almost like a village. I'm glad it is here the opera
+is to be given for the first time."
+
+"So am I," he said, sitting down.
+
+But he spoke almost gloomily, looking at the floor. His face was white
+and too expressive, and his left hand, as it hung down between his
+knees, fluttered. He lifted it, turning the fingers inward.
+
+"Why?" Charmian said.
+
+He looked up at her.
+
+"Oh, I--they are all strangers here."
+
+She said nothing, and just then the telephone bell sounded. Mr. Alston
+Lake was below asking if Mr. Heath was in.
+
+In a moment he entered, looking enthusiastic, full of cheerfulness and
+vitality, bringing with him an atmosphere which Charmian savored almost
+greedily, of expectation and virile optimism.
+
+"My!" he said, as he shook them both by the hand. "You look settled in
+for the night."
+
+"So we are," said Charmian.
+
+Alston laughed.
+
+"I've come to take you to the theater."
+
+"But they're not rehearsing to-night," said Claude.
+
+"No; but Crayford's trying effects."
+
+"Mr. Crayford! Is he back from Philadelphia?" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"Been back an hour and hard at work already. He sent me to fetch you.
+They're all up on the stage trying to get the locust effect."
+
+"The locusts! Wait a minute, Alston! I'll change my gown."
+
+She hurried out of the room.
+
+"Well, old chap, what's up? You don't look too pleased," said Alston to
+Claude as the door shut. "Don't you want to come out? But we must put
+our backs into this, you know. The fight's on, and a bully big fight it
+is. Seen the papers to-day?"
+
+"No. I haven't had a minute. I've been going through the orchestration
+with Meroni."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He was very nice," answered Claude evasively. "But what's in the
+papers?"
+
+"A bit of news that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The
+Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new
+opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be
+ready by the first of March."
+
+"What does it matter?"
+
+"Well, I like that! It takes all the wind out of our sails. In a big
+race the getting off is half the battle. We were coming first. But if I
+know anything of Crayford we shall come first even now. It's all Madame
+Sennier. She's mad against Crayford and the opera and you, and she's
+specially mad against Mrs. Charmian. The papers to-night are full of a
+lot of nonsense about the libretto."
+
+"Which libretto?"
+
+"Yours. Apparently Madame Sennier's been saying it was really written
+for Sennier and had been promised to him."
+
+"That's a lie."
+
+"Of course it is. But she's spread herself on it finely, I can tell you.
+Crayford's simply delighted."
+
+"Delighted, when I'm accused of mean conduct, of stealing another man's
+property."
+
+"It's no use getting furious over our papers! Doesn't pay! Besides, it
+makes a story, works up public interest. Still, I think she might have
+kept out Mrs. Charmian's name."
+
+"Charmian is in it?"
+
+"Yes, a lot of rubbish about her hearing what a stunner the libretto
+was, and rushing over to Paris to bribe it away before Sennier had
+considered it in its finished state."
+
+"How abominable! I shall--"
+
+"I know, but I wouldn't. Crayford says it will give value to the
+libretto, prepare the public mind for a masterpiece, and help to carry
+your music to success."
+
+"I see! With this and the locusts!"
+
+He turned away toward the open window, through which came the incessant
+roar of traffic, the sound of motor horns, and now, for a moment, a
+chiming of bells from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
+
+"Well, we must do all we know. We mustn't give away a single chance. The
+whole Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up
+the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than
+any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a
+deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a
+crowd of pressmen around at the theater about it to-night, you can bet.
+Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or Crayford'll be
+raging."
+
+Claude stood still for an instant, looking from Alston to Charmian, who
+walked in briskly, wearing a sealskin coat that reached to her heels,
+and buttoning long white gloves. Then he said, "I won't be a minute!"
+and went out of the room.
+
+As he disappeared Charmian and Alston looked after him. Then Alston came
+nearer to her, and they began to talk in rather low voices.
+
+"The fight is on!"
+
+How Claude hated those words; how he hated the truth which they
+expressed! To-night, in New York, as he went to fetch his overcoat from
+the smart and brilliantly lit bedroom which was opposite to the
+sitting-room across a lobby, he wondered why Fate had led him into this
+situation, why he had been doomed to become a sort of miserable center
+of intrigue, recrimination, discussion, praise, blame, dissension. No
+man, surely, on the face of the earth had loved tranquillity more than
+he had. Few men had more surely possessed it. He had known his soul and
+he had been its faithful guardian once--but long ago, surely centuries
+ago! That he should be the cause of battle, what an irony!
+
+Thinking with great rapidity, during this brief interval of loneliness,
+while he got ready to go out, a rapidity to which his fatigue seemed to
+contribute, giving it wings, Claude reviewed his life since the first
+evening at Elliot's house. Events and periods and details flashed by;
+his close friendship with Mrs. Mansfield (who had refused to come to
+America), his almost inimical acquaintance with Charmian, Mrs.
+Shiffney's capricious endeavors to get hold of him, the firmness of his
+refusals, the voyage to Algiers, his regret at missing the wonders of
+Africa, Charmian's return full of a knowledge he lacked, the dinner
+during which he had looked at her with new eyes.
+
+(He took down from its hook his heavy fur coat bought for the bitter
+winter of New York.)
+
+Chateaubriand's description of Napoleon, the little island in Mrs.
+Grahame's garden, the production of Jacques Sennier's opera--they were
+all linked together closely at this moment in a tenacious mind; with the
+expression in Charmian's eyes at the end of the opera, Oxford Street by
+night as he walked home, the spectral bunch of white roses on his table,
+the furtive whisper of the letter of love to Charmian as it dropped in
+the box, the watchful policeman, the noise of his heavy steps, the dying
+of the moonlight on the leaded panes of the studio, the scent of the
+earth as the dawn near drew.
+
+Events and periods, and little details! And who or what had guided him
+through the maze of them? And whither was he going? Whither and to what
+was he hastening?
+
+His marriage and the new life came back to him. He heard the maids
+whispering together on the stairs in Kensington Square, and the sound of
+the street organ in the frost. He saw the studio in Renwick Place,
+Charmian coming in with books of poetry in her hands. There, had been
+the beginning of that which had led to Algiers and now to New York, his
+abdication. There, he had taken the first step down from the throne of
+his own knowledge of himself.
+
+He saw a gulf black beneath him.
+
+But Charmian called:
+
+"Claude, do make haste!"
+
+He caught up hat and gloves and went out into the lobby. But even as he
+went, with an extraordinary swiftness he reviewed the incidents of his
+short time in America; the arrival in the cruel coldness of a winter
+dawn; the immensity of the city's aspect seen across the tufted waters,
+its towers--as they had seemed to him then--climbing into Heaven, its
+voices companioning its towers; the throngs of pressmen and
+photographers, who had gazed at him with piercing, yet not unkind, eyes,
+searching him for his secrets; the meeting with Crayford and Crayford's
+small army of helpers; publicity agents, business and stage managers,
+conductors, producers, machinists, typewriters, box-office people, scene
+painters, singers, instrumentalists. Their figures rushed across
+Claude's mind with a vertiginous rapidity. Their faces flashed by
+grimacing. Their hands beckoned him on in a mad career. And he saw the
+huge theater, a monster of masonry, with a terrific maw which he--he of
+all men!--was expected to fill, a maw gaping for human beings, gaping
+for dollars. What a coldness it had struck into him, as he stood for the
+first time looking into its dimness as into the dimness of some gigantic
+cavern. In that moment he had realized, or had at least partially
+realized, the meaning of a tremendous failure, and how far the circles
+of its influence radiate. And he had felt very cold, as a guilty man may
+feel who hugs his secret. And the huge theater had surely leaned over,
+leaned down, filled suddenly with a sinister purpose, to crush him into
+the dust.
+
+"Claude!"
+
+"Here I am!"
+
+"What a time you've been! We--are you very tired?"
+
+"Not a bit. Come along!"
+
+They went out into the corridor lined with marble, stepped into a lift,
+shot down, and passed through the vestibule to the street where a
+taxi-cab was waiting. A young man stood on the pavement, and while
+Charmian was getting in he spoke to Claude.
+
+"Mr. Claude Heath, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I represent--"
+
+"Very sorry I can't wait. I have to go to the theater."
+
+He sprang in, and the taxi turned to the right into Fifth Avenue, and
+rushed toward Central Park. A mountain of lights towered up on the left
+where the Plaza invaded the starless sky. The dark spaces of the Park
+showed vaguely on the right, as the cab swung round. In front gleamed
+the golden and sleepless eyes of the Broadway district. The sharp frosty
+air quivered with a thousand noises. Motors hurried by in an unending
+procession, little gleaming worlds, each holding its group of strangers,
+gazing, gesticulating, laughing, intent on some unknown errand. The
+pavements were thronged with pedestrians, muffled to the ears and
+walking swiftly. The taxi-cab, caught in the maze of traffic, jerked as
+the chauffeur applied the brakes, and slowed down almost to walking
+pace. Under a lamp Claude saw a colored woman wearing a huge pink hat.
+She seemed to be gazing at him, and her large lips parted in a smile. In
+an instant she was gone. But Claude could not forget her. In his
+excitement and fatigue he thought of her as a great goblin woman, and
+her smile was a terrible grin of bitter sarcasm stretching across the
+world. Charmian and Alston were talking unweariedly. Claude did not hear
+what they were saying. He saw snowflakes floating down between the
+lights, strangely pure and remote, lost wanderers from some delicate
+world where the fragile things are worshipped. And, with a strange
+emotion, his heart turned to the now remote children of his imagination,
+those children with whom he had sat alone by his wood fire on lonely
+evenings, when the pale blue of the flames had struck on his eyes like
+the soft notes of a flute on his ears, those children with whom he had
+kept long vigils and sometimes seen the dawn. How far they had retreated
+from him, as if they thought him a stern, or neglectful father! He shut
+his eyes, and seemed to see once more the smile of the goblin woman, and
+then the fiery gaze of Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"How could she say it? But I don't know that I mind!"
+
+"Minding things doesn't help any in a place like New York."
+
+"But will they believe it?"
+
+"If they do half of them will think you worth while."
+
+"Yes, but the other half?"
+
+"As long as you get there it's all right."
+
+The cab stopped at the stage door of Crayford's opera house.
+
+As they went in two or three journalists spoke to them, asking for
+information about the libretto. Claude hurried on as if he did not hear
+them. His usual almost eager amiability of manner with strangers had
+deserted him this evening. But Charmian and Alston Lake spoke to the
+pressmen, and Alston's whole-hearted laugh rang out. Claude heard it and
+envied Alston.
+
+From a room on the right of the entrance a very dark young man came
+carrying some letters.
+
+"More letters!" he said to Claude, with a smile.
+
+"Oh, thank you."
+
+"They're all on the stage. The locusts will be real fine when they fix
+them right. We have folks inquiring about them all the time. Nothing
+like that in the Sennier opera."
+
+He smiled again with pleasant boyishness. Claude longed to take him by
+the shoulders and say to him:
+
+"It isn't a swarm of locusts that will make an opera!" But he only
+nodded and remarked:
+
+"All the better for us!"
+
+Then hastily he opened his letters. Three were from autograph hunters,
+and he thrust them into the pocket of his coat. The fourth was from
+Armand Gillier. When Claude saw the name of his collaborator he stood
+still and read the note frowning.
+
+"Letters! Always letters!" said Charmian, coming up. "Anything
+interesting, Claudie?"
+
+"Gillier is coming out after all."
+
+"Armand Gillier!"
+
+"Yes. Or--he arrived to-day, I expect, though this was posted in France.
+What day does the _Philadelphia_--"
+
+"This morning," said Alston.
+
+"Then he's here."
+
+Charmian looked disgusted.
+
+"It's bad taste on his part. After his horrible efforts to ruin the
+opera he ought to have kept away."
+
+"What does it matter?" said Claude.
+
+"He'll be interviewed on the libretto," said Alston. "Gee knows what
+he'll say, the beast!"
+
+"If he backs up Madame Sennier in her libelous remarks it will be
+proclaiming that he can be bribed," exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"I suppose he's bound to throw in his lot with us," added Alston, as
+they came into the huge curving corridor which ran behind the ground
+tier boxes.
+
+"How dark it is! Claudie, give me your hand. It slopes, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes. The entrance is just here."
+
+"How hot your hand is!"
+
+"Here we are!" said Alston.
+
+He pushed a swing door, and they came into the theater. It was dimly
+lighted, and over the rows of stalls pale coverings were drawn. The
+hundreds of empty boxes gaped. The distant galleries were lost in the
+darkness. It was a vast house, and the faint light and the emptiness of
+it made it look even vaster than it was.
+
+"The maw, and I am to fill it!" Claude thought again. And he was
+conscious of unimportance. He even felt as if he had never composed any
+music, as if he knew nothing about composition, had no talent at all. It
+seemed to him incredible that, because of him, of what he had done,
+great sums of money were being spent, small armies of people were at
+work, columns upon columns were being written in myriads of newspapers,
+a man such as Crayford was putting forth all his influence, lavishing
+all his powers of showman, impresario, man of taste, fighting man. He
+remembered the night when Sennier's opera was produced, and it seemed to
+him impossible that such a night could ever come to him, be his night.
+He thought of it somewhat as a man thinks of Death, as his neighbor's
+visitant not as his own.
+
+"Chaw-_lee_!" shouted an imperative voice. "Chaw-ley! Chaw-_lee_!"
+
+"Ah!" cried a thin voice from somewhere behind the stage.
+
+"Get down that light! Give us your ambers! No, not the blues! Your
+ambers! Where's Jimber? I say, where is Jimber?"
+
+Mr. Mulworth, the stage producer, who was the speaker, appeared running
+sidewise down an uncovered avenue between two rows of stalls close to
+the stage. Although a large man, he proceeded with remarkable rapidity.
+Emerging into the open he came upon Claude.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Crayford is here. He wants very much to see you."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Somewhere behind. I think he's viewing camels. Can you come with me?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+He went off quickly with Mr. Mulworth, who shouted:
+
+"I say, where is Jimber?" to some unknown personality as he ran toward a
+door which gave on to the stage.
+
+"Let us go and sit down at the back of the stalls, Alston," said
+Charmian. "They don't seem to be trying the locusts yet."
+
+"No. There are always delays. The patience one needs in a theater! Talk
+of self-control! Here, I'll pull away the--or shall we go to that box?"
+
+"Yes. I'll get on this chair. Help me! That's it."
+
+They sat down in a dark box at the back of the stalls. Far off, across a
+huge space, they saw the immense stage, lit up now by an amber glow
+which came not from the footlights but from above. The stage was set
+with a scene representing an oasis in the desert with yellow sand in the
+distance. Among some tufted palms stood three or four stage hands, pale,
+dusty, in shirt sleeves. At the extreme back of the scene, against the
+horizon, Mr. Mulworth crossed, with a thick-set, lantern-jawed, and very
+bald man, who was probably Jimber. Claude followed two or three yards
+behind them, and disappeared. His face looked ghastly under the stream
+of amber light.
+
+"It's dreadful to see people on the stage not made up!" said Charmian.
+"They all look so corpse-like. O Alston, are we going to have a
+success?"
+
+"What! You beginning to doubt!"
+
+"No, no. But when I see this huge dark theater I can't help thinking,
+'Shall we fill it?' What a fight art is! I never realized till now that
+we are on a battlefield. Alston, I feel I would almost rather die than
+fail."
+
+"Fail! But--"
+
+"Or quite rather die."
+
+"In any case it couldn't be your failure."
+
+She turned and looked at him in the heavy dimness.
+
+"Couldn't it?"
+
+"You didn't write the libretto. You didn't compose the music."
+
+"And yet," she said, in a low tense voice, "it would be my failure if
+the opera failed, because but for me it never would have been written,
+never have been produced out here. Alston, it's a great responsibility.
+And I never really understood how great till I saw Claude go across the
+stage just now. He looked so--he looked--"
+
+She broke off.
+
+"Whatever is it, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"He looked like a victim, I thought."
+
+"Everyone does in that light unless--there's Crayford!"
+
+At this moment Mr. Crayford came upon the stage from the side on which
+Claude had just vanished. He had a soft hat on the back of his head, and
+a cigar in his mouth.
+
+"He doesn't!" whispered Charmian.
+
+"Now go ahead!" roared Crayford. "Work your motors and let's see!"
+
+There was a sound like a rushing mighty wind.
+
+At two o'clock in the morning Crayford was still smoking, still
+watching, still shouting. Charmian and Alston were still in the darkness
+of the box, gazing, listening, sometimes talking. They had not seen
+Claude again. If he came into the front of the theater they meant to
+call him. But he did not come. The hours had flown, and now, when Alston
+looked at his watch and told Charmian the time, she could scarcely
+believe him.
+
+"Where can Claude be?"
+
+"I'll go behind."
+
+"Jimber!" roared Mr. Crayford. "Where is Jimber?"
+
+Mr. Mulworth, who looked now as if he had lain awake in his clothes for
+more nights than he cared to remember, rushed upon the stage almost
+fanatically.
+
+"The locusts are all in one corner!" shouted Crayford. "What's the use
+of that? They must spread."
+
+"Spread your locusts!" bawled Mr. Mulworth.
+
+He lifted both his arms in a semaphore movement, which he continued
+until it seemed as if his physical mechanism had escaped from the
+control of his brain.
+
+"Spread your locusts, Jimber!" he wailed. "Spread! Spread! I tell
+you--spread your locusts!"
+
+He vanished, always moving his arms. His voice died away in the further
+regions.
+
+Charmian was alone. She had nodded in reply to Alston's remark. To-night
+she felt rather anxious about Claude. She could not entirely rid her
+mind of the remembrance of him crossing under the light, looking
+unnatural, ghastly, like a persecuted man. And now that she was alone
+she felt as if she were haunted. Eager to be reassured, she fixed her
+eyes on the keen figure, the resolute face, of Mr. Crayford. The power
+of work in Americans was almost astounding, she thought. All the men
+with whom she and Claude had had anything to do seemed to be working all
+the time, unresting as waves driven by a determined wind. Keenness! That
+was the characteristic of this marvellous city, this marvellous land.
+And it had acted upon her almost like electricity. She had felt charged
+with it.
+
+It would be terrible to fail before a nation that worshipped success,
+that looked for it with resolute piercing eyes.
+
+And she recalled her arrival with Claude in the cold light of early
+morning, her first sensation of enchantment when a pressman, with
+searching eyes and a firm mouth turned down at the corners, had come up
+to interview her. At that moment she had felt that she was leaving the
+dulness of the unknown life behind her for ever. It was no doubt a
+terribly vulgar feeling. She had been uneasily conscious of that. But,
+nevertheless, it had grown within her, fostered by events. For
+Crayford's publicity agent had been masterly in his efforts. Charmian
+and Claude had been snapshotted on the deck of the ship by a little army
+of journalists. They had been snapshotted again on the gangplank. In the
+docks they had been interviewed by more than a dozen people. A little
+later, in the afternoon of the same day, they had held a reception of
+pressmen in their sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel. Charmian thought
+of these men now as she waited for Alston's return.
+
+They had been introduced by Mr. Cane, Crayford's publicity agent, and
+had arrived about three o'clock. All of them were, or looked as if they
+were, young men, smart and alert, men who meant something. And they had
+all been polite and charming. They had "sat around" attentively, and had
+put their questions without brutality. They had seemed interested,
+sympathetic, as if they really cared about Claude's talent and the
+opera. His song, _Wild Heart of Youth_, had been touched upon, and a
+tall young man, with a pale face and anxious eyes, had told Charmian
+that he loved it. Then they had discussed music. Claude at first had
+seemed uncomfortable, almost too modest, Charmian had thought. But the
+pressmen had been so agreeable, so unself-conscious, that his discomfort
+had worn off. His natural inclination to please, to give people what
+they seemed to expect of him, had come to his rescue. He had been
+vivacious and even charming. But when the pressmen had gone he had said
+to Charmian:
+
+"Pleasant fellows, weren't they? But their eyes ask one for success.
+Till the opera is out I shall see those eyes, asking, always asking!"
+
+And he had gone out of the room with a gesture suggestive of anxiety,
+almost of fear.
+
+Charmian saw those eyes now as she sat in the box. What Claude had said
+was true. Beneath the sympathy, the charm, the frankness, the readiness
+in welcome of these Americans, there was a silent and strong demand--the
+demand of a powerful, vital country.
+
+"We are here to make you known over immense distances to thousands of
+people!" the eyes of the pressmen had seemed to say. "But--produce the
+goods!" In other words, "Be a success!"
+
+"Be a success! Be a success!" It seemed to Charmian as if all America
+were saying that in her ears unceasingly. "We will be kind to you. We
+will shower good-will upon you. We have hospitable hands, keen brains,
+warm hearts at your service. We only ask to give of our best to you.
+But--be a success! Be a success!"
+
+And the voice grew so strong that at last it seemed almost stern, almost
+fierce in her ears. At last it seemed as if peril would attend upon
+non-compliance with its demand.
+
+She thought of Claude crossing the stage under the amber light, she
+looked into the vast dim theater with its thousands of empty seats, and
+excitement and fear burned in her, mingled together. Then something
+determined in her, the thing perhaps which had enabled her to take
+Claude for her husband, and later to play a part in his art life, rose
+up and drove out the fear. "It is fear which saps the will, fear which
+disintegrates, fear which calls to failure." She was able to say that to
+herself and to cast fear away. And her mind repeated the words she had
+often heard Crayford utter, "It's up to us now to bring the thing off
+and we've just got to bring it off!"
+
+"No, no, I tell you! They're too much on one side of the scene still!
+Who in thunder ever saw locusts swarming in a corner when they've got
+the whole desert to spread themselves in? It aren't their nature. What?
+Well, then, you must alter the position of your motors. Where is
+Jimber?"
+
+And Mr. Crayford strode behind the scenes.
+
+Half-past two in the morning! What could Claude be doing? Was Alston
+never coming back? Charmian suddenly began to feel tired and cold. She
+buttoned her sealskin coat up to her throat. For a moment there was no
+one on the stage. From behind the scenes came no longer the clever
+imitation of a roaring wind. An abrupt inaction, that was like
+desolation, made the great house seem oddly vacant. She sat staring
+rather vaguely at the palms and the yellow sands.
+
+After she had sat thus for perhaps some five minutes she saw Claude walk
+hastily on to the stage. He had a large black note-book and a pencil in
+his hand, and seemed in search of someone. Crayford came on brusquely
+from the opposite side of the scene and met him. They began to confer
+together.
+
+The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.
+
+"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."
+
+"What has he been doing all this time?"
+
+"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be
+first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the
+run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's
+out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary
+heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"
+
+"But I don't like to leave Claude."
+
+"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he
+can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."
+
+"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she
+got up to go.
+
+"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted
+everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a
+monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's
+pulling her part to pieces now."
+
+"How did Claude take it?"
+
+"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."
+
+"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home
+without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the
+end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."
+
+"He'll send us away."
+
+"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.
+
+The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford,
+Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the
+stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the
+taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the
+cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel
+Claude asked him to come in.
+
+"I can't go to bed," he said.
+
+"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.
+
+"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the
+question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar,
+and try to quiet down."
+
+"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."
+
+"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."
+
+At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly,
+intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly
+vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were
+dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.
+
+"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I
+think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"
+
+He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of
+champagne, he added:
+
+"I say, let us make a bargain!"
+
+"What is it, old chap?"
+
+"Let us--just us three--have supper together after the first
+performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of
+semi-strangers."
+
+"I'll come! Drink to that night!"
+
+They drank.
+
+Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the
+lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled
+under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them
+the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put
+questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.
+
+Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the
+libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had
+made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a
+bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was
+to sing the big role in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as
+an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the
+libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set
+it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful
+temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to
+capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no
+doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers.
+The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to
+muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame
+Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false
+move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.
+
+As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with
+excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before,
+invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when
+he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether
+he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair
+had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had
+seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all
+subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt"
+was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say
+so to Claude. There had been an argument--the theater is the Temple of
+Argument--and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck
+to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now,
+as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did
+it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every deadly sin, were imputed to
+him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his
+brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic?
+What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a
+poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added
+to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it--so long as it was
+a success? The blatant thing--everyone, every circumstance, was urging
+Claude to snatch at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning,
+excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on
+his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and
+crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the
+popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of
+sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to
+be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like
+the clashing of brass instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear
+them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.
+
+One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been
+interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his
+work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct
+statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however,
+had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto,
+which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to
+music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the
+management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally
+remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is
+that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery,
+acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or
+anyone else, says to you."
+
+"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself
+up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.
+
+"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.
+
+"What does it matter?" said Claude.
+
+Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh
+cigar.
+
+"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big,
+resounding success?"
+
+Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half
+congratulatory.
+
+"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of
+success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the
+breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to
+get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've
+simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from
+Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it.
+That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at
+first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep
+himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got
+anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what
+people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses
+of advertisement which has quite enlightened me."
+
+"What did he say?" interjected Alston.
+
+"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let
+them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last
+nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not
+at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys,
+mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up
+to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all
+to--keep my name before the public."'"
+
+Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to
+look grave and excited.
+
+"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the
+man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must
+be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever
+they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and
+sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told
+me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our
+combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new
+libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been
+trying to re-write a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got
+nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did
+work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed
+in the opera, didn't he?"
+
+"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And
+he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music--and he's a man who
+knows."
+
+"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we
+bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."
+
+"Rather! The coming baritone!"
+
+"What a change!"
+
+His eyes shone with excitement.
+
+"I used to be almost afraid of celebrity, I think. But now I want it, I
+need it. America has made me need it."
+
+"This is the country that wakes people up," said Alston.
+
+"It drives me almost mad!" cried Claude, with sudden violence.
+
+"Claudie!" exclaimed Charmian.
+
+"It does! There's something here that pumps nervous energy into one
+until one's body and mind seem to be swirling in a mill race. When I
+think of my life in Mullion House and my life here!"
+
+Charmian, with a quick movement, sat upright on the sofa.
+
+"Then you do realize--" she began, almost excitedly. She paused, gazing
+at Claude.
+
+The two men looked at her.
+
+"What is it?" Claude said at length, as she remained silent.
+
+"You do realize that I did see something for you that you hadn't seen
+for yourself, when you shut yourself and your talent in, when you
+wouldn't look at, wouldn't touch the world?"
+
+"Of course. I hadn't courage then. I dreaded contact with life. Now I
+defy life to get the better of me. I know it, and I'm beginning to know
+how to deal with it. I say, let us plan out our campaign if Madame
+Sennier persists in her accusations."
+
+He sat down between them.
+
+"But first tell us exactly what you gave out to the pressmen to-night,"
+said Alston.
+
+They talked till the dawn crept along the sky.
+
+When at last Alston got up to go, Claude said:
+
+"If three strong wills are worth anything we must succeed."
+
+"And we've got Crayford's back of ours," said Alston, putting his arms
+behind him into the sleeves of his coat. "Good-morning! I'm really
+going."
+
+And he went.
+
+Charmian had got up from her sofa, and was standing by the
+writing-table, which was in an angle of the room on the right of the
+window. As Alston went out, her eyes fell on an envelope lying by itself
+a little apart from the letters with which the table was strewn.
+Scarcely thinking about what she was doing she stretched out her hand.
+Her intention was to put the envelope with its fellows. But when she
+took it up she saw that it had not been opened and contained a letter,
+or note, addressed to Claude.
+
+"Why, here's a letter for you, Claudie!" she said, giving it to him.
+
+"Is there? Another autograph hunter, I suppose."
+
+Without glancing at the writing he tore the envelope, took out a letter,
+and began to read it.
+
+"It's from Mrs. Shiffney!" he said. "She arrived to-day on the same ship
+as Gillier."
+
+"I knew she would come!" cried Charmian. "Though they all pretended she
+was going to winter at Cap Martin."
+
+"And she's brought Susan Fleet with her."
+
+"Susan!"
+
+"But read what she says. It seems to have all been quite unexpected, a
+sudden caprice."
+
+"You poor thing!" said Charmian, looking at him with pitiful eyes. "When
+will you begin to understand?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Us."
+
+Claude sent a glance so keen that it was almost like a dart at Charmian.
+But she did not see it for she was reading the letter.
+
+
+                                         "THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL,
+                                                        _Friday._
+
+     "DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've just arrived with Susan Fleet on
+     the _Philadelphia_. I heard such reports of the excitement over
+     your opera out here that I suddenly felt I must run over. After all
+     you told me about it at Constantine I'm naturally interested. Do be
+     nice and let me into a rehearsal. I never take sides in questions
+     of art, and though of course I'm a friend of the Senniers, I'm
+     really praying for you to have a triumph. Surely the sky has room
+     for two stars. What nonsense all this Press got-up rivalry is.
+     Don't believe a word you see in the papers about Henriette and your
+     libretto. She knows nothing whatever about it, of course. Such
+     rubbish! Susan is pining to see her beloved Charmian. Can't you
+     both lunch with us at Sherry's to-morrow at one o'clock? Love to
+     Charmian.--Yours very sincerely,
+                                              ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
+
+
+
+"Well?" said Claude, as Charmian sat without speaking, after she had
+finished the letter. "Shall we go to Sherry's to-morrow?"
+
+He spoke as if he were testing her, but she did not seem to notice it.
+
+"Yes, Claudie, I think we will."
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"What are you thinking?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Do you still believe Mrs. Shiffney tricked me at Constantine?"
+
+"I know she did."
+
+"And yet--"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"We are in the arena!"
+
+"Ah--I understand."
+
+"If we go to Sherry's, and Mrs. Shiffney speaks about coming to a
+rehearsal, what do you mean to do?"
+
+"What do you think about it?"
+
+"Of course she only wants to come in the hope of being able to carry a
+bad report to the Senniers."
+
+Claude was silent for a moment. Then he said:
+
+"That may be. But--we are in the arena."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You dislike Mrs. Shiffney, you distrust her, but you do think she has
+taste, judgment, don't you?"
+
+"Yes--some."
+
+"A great deal?"
+
+"When she isn't biased by personal feeling. But she is biased against
+you."
+
+Claude's eyes had become piercing.
+
+"I think," he said, "that if I were with Mrs. Shiffney at a rehearsal I
+should divine her real, her honest opinion, the opinion one has of a
+thing whether one wishes to have it or not. If _she_ were to admire the
+opera--" He paused. His face looked self-conscious.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I only mean that I think it might be the verdict in advance."
+
+"I see," she said slowly. "Yes, I see."
+
+She got up.
+
+"We simply must go to bed."
+
+"Come along then. But I feel as if I should never want to sleep again."
+
+"We must sleep. The verdict in advance--yes, I see. But Adelaide might
+make a mistake."
+
+"She really has a flair."
+
+"I know. Oh, Claudie, the verdict!"
+
+They were now in their bedroom. Charmian sighed and put her arms round
+his neck.
+
+"The verdict!" she breathed against his cheek softly.
+
+He felt moisture on his cheek. She had pressed wet eyes against it.
+
+"Charmian, what is it? Why--"
+
+"Hush! Just put your arms round me for a minute--yes, like that!
+Claudie, I want you to win, I want you to win. Oh, not altogether
+selfishly! I--I am an egoist, I suppose. I do care for my husband to be
+a success. But there's more than that. Yes, yes, there is!"
+
+She held him, with passion, and suddenly kissed his eyes. She was crying
+quite openly now, but not unhappily.
+
+[Illustration: "'CLAUDIE, I WANT YOU TO WIN, I WANT YOU TO WIN!'"--_Page
+378_]
+
+"There's something in you far, far down, that I love," she whispered. "I
+am not always conscious of it, but I am now. It called me to you, I
+believe, at the very first. And I want that to win, I want that to win!"
+
+Claude's face had become set. He bent over Charmian. For a moment he was
+on the verge of a strange confession. But something that still had great
+power held him back from it. And he only said:
+
+"You have worked hard for me. If we do win it will be your victory."
+
+"And if we lose?" she whispered.
+
+"Charmian--" he kissed her. "We must try to sleep."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+On a night of unnatural excitement Claude had come to a crude
+resolution. He kept to it, at first only by a strong effort, during the
+days and the nights which followed, calling upon his will with a
+recklessness he had never known before, a recklessness which made him
+sometimes feel hard and almost brutal. He was "out for" success on the
+large scale, and he was now fiercely determined to win it. Within him
+the real man seemed to recede like a thing sensitive seeking a
+hiding-place. Sometimes, during these strange and crowded days and
+nights, he felt as if he were losing himself in the turmoil around him
+and within him. And the wish came to him to lose himself, and to have
+done for ever with that self which once he had cherished, but which was
+surely of no use, of no value at all, in the violent blustering world.
+
+Now and then he saw the pale shining of the lamp in the quiet studio,
+where he had dwelt with the dear children of his imagination; now and
+then he listened, and seemed to hear the silence there. Then the crowd
+closed about him, the noises of life rushed upon him, and the Claude
+Heath of those far-off days seemed to pass by him fantastically on the
+way to eternal darkness. And, using his will with fury, he cried out to
+the fugitive, "Go! Go!" as to something shameful that must not be seen.
+
+Always he was suffering, as a man only suffers when he tries to do
+violence to himself, when he treats himself as an enemy. But when he had
+time he strove to sneer at his own suffering. Coolness, hardness,
+audacity, these were the qualities needed in life as he knew it now;
+swiftness not sensitiveness, boldness not delicacy. The world was not
+gentle enough for the trembling qualities which vibrate at every touch
+of emotion, giving out subtle music. And he would nevermore wish it
+gentle. Things as they are! Fall down and worship them! Accommodate
+yourself to them lest you be the last of fools!
+
+Claude acted, and carried on by excitement, he acted well. He was helped
+by his natural inclination to meet people half-way when he had to meet
+them. And he was helped, too, by the cordiality, the quickness of
+response, in those about him. Charmian did her part with an energy and
+brilliance to which the apparent change in him gave an impetus. Hitherto
+she had tried to excite in Claude the worldly qualities which she
+supposed to make for success. Now Claude excited them in her. His
+vivacity, his intensity, his power to do varied work, and especially the
+dominating faculty which he now began to display, sometimes almost
+amazed her. She said to herself, "I have never known him till now!" She
+said to Alston Lake, "Isn't it extraordinary how Claude is coming out?"
+And she began to look up to him in a new way, but with the worldly eyes,
+not with the mild or the passionate eyes of the spirit.
+
+Others, too, were impressed by the change in Claude. After the luncheon
+at Sherry's Mrs. Shiffney said, with a sort of reluctance, to Charmian:
+
+"The air of America seems to agree with your composer. Has he been on
+Riverside Drive getting rid of the last traces of the Puritan tradition?
+Or is it the theater which has stirred him up? He's a new man."
+
+"There's a good deal more in Claude than people were inclined to suppose
+in London," said Charmian, trying to speak with light indifference, but
+secretly triumphing.
+
+"Evidently!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Perhaps, now that you've forced him to
+come out into the open, he enjoys being a storm-center, as they call it
+out here."
+
+"Oh, but I didn't force him!"
+
+"Playfully begged him not to come, I meant."
+
+Claude was sitting a little way off talking to Susan Fleet. Mrs.
+Shiffney had "managed" this. She wanted to feel how things were through
+the woman. Then perhaps she would tackle the man. At lunch it had seemed
+to her as if success were in the air. Had she always been mistaken in
+her judgment of Claude Heath! Had Charmian seen more clearly and farther
+than she had? She felt more interested in Charmian than she had ever
+felt before, and disliked her, in consequence, much more than formerly.
+How Charmian would triumph if the Heath opera were a success! How
+unbearable she would be! In fancy Mrs. Shiffney saw Charmian enthroned,
+and "giving herself" a thousand airs. Mrs. Shiffney had never forgiven
+Charmian for taking possession of Claude. She did not hate her for that.
+Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked
+those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as
+the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating
+Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in
+which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she
+wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his
+intensity, his vivacity, his resolution, she was conscious of
+fascination. He puzzled her. "There really is a great deal in him," she
+said to herself. And she wished that some of that "great deal" could be
+hers. As it could not be hers, unless her judgment of a man, not happily
+come to, and now almost angrily accepted, was at fault, she wished to
+punish. She could not help this. But she did not desire to help it.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney separated from the Heaths that day without speaking of the
+"libretto-scandal," as the papers now called the invention of Madame
+Sennier. They parted apparently on cordial terms. And Mrs. Shiffney's
+last words were:
+
+"I'm coming to see you one day in your eyrie at the Saint Regis. I take
+no sides where art is in question, and I want both the operas to be
+brilliant successes."
+
+She had said not a word about the rehearsals at the New Era Opera House.
+
+Charmian was almost disappointed by her silence. She had turned over and
+over in her mind Claude's words about the verdict in advance. She
+continued to dwell upon them mentally after the meeting with Mrs.
+Shiffney. By degrees she became almost obsessed by the idea of Mrs.
+Shiffney as arbiter of Claude's destiny and hers.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney's position had always fascinated Charmian, because it was
+the position she would have loved to occupy. Even in her dislike, her
+complete distrust of Mrs. Shiffney, Charmian was attracted by her. Now
+she longed with increasing intensity to use Mrs. Shiffney as a test.
+
+Rehearsals of Claude's opera were being hurried on. Crayford was
+determined to produce his novelty before the Metropolitan crowd produced
+theirs.
+
+"They've fixed the first," he said. "Then it's up to us to be ready by
+the twenty-eighth, and that's all there is to it. We'll get time enough
+to die all right afterward. But there aren't got to be no dying nor
+quitting now. We've fixed the locusts, and now we'll start in to fix all
+the rest of the cut-out."
+
+He had begun to call Claude's opera "the cut-out" because he said it was
+certain to cut out Sennier's work. The rumors about the weakness of
+Sennier's libretto had put the finishing touch to his pride and
+enthusiasm. Thenceforth he set no bounds to his expectations.
+
+"We've got a certainty!" he said. "And they know it."
+
+His energy was volcanic. He knew neither rest nor the desire to rest.
+His season so far had been successful, much more successful than any
+former season of his. He knew that he was making way with the great New
+York public, and he was carried on by the vigor which flames up in a
+strong and determined man who believes himself to be almost within reach
+of the satisfaction of his greatest desire.
+
+Claude, in his new character of the man determined to win a great
+popular triumph, appealed forcibly to Crayford.
+
+"I've made him over!" he exclaimed to Charmian, almost with exultation.
+"He's a man now. When I lit out on him he was--well, well, little lady,
+don't you begin to fire up at me! All I mean is that Claude knows how to
+carry things with him now. Look how he's stood up against all the
+nonsense about the libretto! Why, he's right down enjoyed it. And the
+first night the pressmen started in he was like a man possessed, talked
+about his honor, and all that kind of rubbish. Now he says 'Stir it up!
+It's all for the good of the opera!' Cane's fairly mad about him, says
+he's on the way to be the best boom-center that ever made a publicity
+agent feel young. I'm proud of him! And he's moving all the time. He'll
+get there and no mistake!"
+
+"I always knew Claude would rise to his chance if he got it," she said.
+
+"He's got it now, don't you worry yourself. Not one man in a million has
+such a chance at his age. I tell you, Claude is a made man!"
+
+A made man! Charmian felt a thrill at her heart. But again she longed
+for a verdict from outside, for a verdict from Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+In the midst of the tumult of her life one day, very soon after the
+lunch at Sherry's, she begged Susan Fleet to come to see her. That day
+Claude and she had been with Gillier at the theater. As they had ignored
+Mrs. Shiffney's treachery in the affair of the libretto, so they had
+ignored Gillier's insulting behavior to them at Djenan-el-Maqui. Against
+his will he was with them now in the great enterprise. They had resolved
+to be charming to him, and had taken care to be so. And Gillier,
+delighted with the notoriety that was his, his conceit decked out with
+feathers, met them half-way. He was impressed by the situation which
+Crayford's powerful efforts had created for them. He was moved by the
+marked change in Claude. These people did not seem to him the same
+husband and wife he had known in the hidden Arab house at Mustapha. They
+had gained immeasurably in importance. Comment rained upon them.
+Conflict swirled about them. Expectations centered upon them. And they
+had the air of those upon whose footsteps the goddess, Success, is
+following. Gillier began to lose his regret for his lost opportunity. He
+was insensibly drawn to the Heaths by the spell of united effort. Now
+that Claude did not seem to care twopence for him, or for anyone else,
+Gillier began to respect him, to think a good deal of him. In Charmian
+he had always been aware of certain faculties which often make for
+success.
+
+On the day when Charmian was expected to see Susan Fleet she had just
+come from an afternoon rehearsal which had gone well. Gillier had been
+almost savagely delighted with the performance of Enid Mardon, who sang
+and acted the role of the heroine. He knew little of music, but in the
+scene rehearsed Claude had introduced a clever imitation, if not an
+exact reproduction, of the songs of Said Hitani and his companions.
+This had aroused the enthusiasm of Gillier, who had a curious love of
+the country where he had spent the wild years of his youth. It had been
+evident both to Charmian and to Claude that he began to have great hopes
+of the opera. Charmian had become so exultant on noticing this that she
+had been unable to refrain from saying to Gillier, "Do you begin to
+believe in it?" As she sat now waiting for Susan she remembered his
+answer, "Madame, if the whole opera goes like that scene--well!" He had
+finished with a characteristic gesture, throwing out his strong hands
+and smiling at her. She almost felt as if she liked Gillier. She began
+to find excuses for his former conduct. He was a poor man struggling to
+make his way, terribly anxious to succeed. Madame Sennier had "got at"
+him. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he had wished to associate
+himself with Jacques Sennier. Of course he had had no right to suggest
+the withdrawal of his libretto from Claude. That had been insulting. But
+still--that day Charmian found room in her heart for charity. She had
+not felt so happy, so safe, for a very long time. It was almost as if
+she held success in her hand, as a woman may hold a jewel and say, "It
+is mine!"
+
+A slight buzzing sound told her that there was someone at the outer door
+of the lobby. In a moment Susan walked in, looking as usual temperate,
+kind, and absolutely unconscious of herself. She was warmly wrapped in a
+fur given to her by Mrs. Shiffney. When she had taken it off and sat
+down beside Charmian in the over-heated room, Charmian began at once to
+use her as a receptacle. She proceeded to pour her exultation into
+Susan. The rehearsal had greatly excited her. She was full of the ardent
+impatience of one who had been patient by force of will in defiance of
+natural character, and who now felt that a period was soon to be put to
+her suffering and that she was to enter into her reward. As, long ago,
+in an Algerian garden, she had used Susan, she used her now. And Susan
+sat quietly listening, with her odd eyes dropping in their sockets.
+
+"Oh, Susan, do take off your gloves!" Charmian exclaimed presently. "You
+are going to stay a good while, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, if you like me to."
+
+"I should like to be with you every day for hours. You do me good. We'll
+have tea."
+
+She went to the telephone, came back quickly, sat down again, and
+continued talking enthusiastically. When the tea-table was in front of
+her, and the elderly German waiter had gone, she said:
+
+"Isn't it wonderful? I shall never forget how you spoke of destiny to me
+when we were by the little island. It was then, I think, that I felt it
+was my fate to link myself with Claude, to help him on. Do you remember
+what you said?"
+
+"That perhaps it was designed that you should teach Mr. Heath."
+
+"Don't say mister--on such a day as this!"
+
+"Claude, then."
+
+"And, Susan, I don't want to seem vain, but I have taught him, I have
+taught him to know and rely on himself, to believe in himself, in his
+genius, to dominate. He's marvellously changed. Everyone notices it. You
+do, of course!"
+
+"There is a change. And I remember saying that perhaps it was designed
+that you should learn from him. Do you recollect that?"
+
+Charmian was handing Susan her tea-cup.
+
+"Oh--yes," she said.
+
+She looked at Susan as the latter took the cup with a calm and steady
+hand.
+
+"What excellent tea!" observed Susan.
+
+"Is it? Susan!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I believe you are very reserved."
+
+"No, I don't think so."
+
+"Yes, you keep half your thoughts about things and people entirely to
+yourself."
+
+"I think most of us do that."
+
+"About me, for instance! I've been talking a great deal to you in here.
+And you've been listening, and thinking."
+
+There was an uneasy sound in Charmian's voice.
+
+"Yes. Didn't you wish me to listen?"
+
+"I suppose I did. But you've been thinking. What have you been
+thinking?"
+
+"That it's a long journey up the ray," said Susan, with a sort of gentle
+firmness.
+
+"Ah--the ray! I remember your saying that to me long ago."
+
+"We've got a great deal to learn, I think, as well as to teach."
+
+Charmian was silent for a minute.
+
+"Do you mean that you think I only care to teach, that I--that I am not
+much of a pupil?" she said at length.
+
+"Perhaps that is putting it too strongly. But I believe your husband had
+a great deal to give."
+
+"Claude! Do you? But yes, of course--Susan!" Charmian's voice changed,
+became almost sharply interrogative. "Do you mean that Claude could
+teach me more than I could ever teach him?"
+
+"It is impossible for me to be sure of that."
+
+"Perhaps. But, tell me, do you think it is so?"
+
+"I am inclined to."
+
+Charmian felt as if she flushed. She was conscious of a stir of
+something that was like anger within her. It hurt her very much to think
+that perhaps Susan put Claude higher than her. But she controlled the
+expression of what she felt, and only said, perhaps a little coldly:
+
+"It ought to be so. He is so much cleverer than I am."
+
+"I don't think I mean that. It isn't always cleverness we learn from."
+
+"Goodness then!"
+
+Charmian forced herself to smile.
+
+"Do you think me far below Claude from the moral point of view?" she
+added, with an attempt at laughing lightness.
+
+"It isn't that either. But I think he has let out an anchor which
+reaches bottom, though perhaps at present he isn't aware of it. And I'm
+not sure that you ever have. By the way, I've a message from Adelaide
+for you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"She wants to know how your rehearsals are going."
+
+"Wonderfully well, as I said."
+
+Charmain spoke almost gravely. Her exultant enthusiasm had died away for
+the moment.
+
+"And, if it is allowed, she would like to go to one. Can she?"
+
+Charmian hesitated. But the strong desire for Mrs. Shiffney's verdict
+overcame a certain suddenly born reluctance of which she was aware, and
+she said:
+
+"I should think so. Why not? Even a spy cannot destroy the merit of the
+enemy's work by wishing."
+
+Susan said nothing to this.
+
+"You must come with her if she does come," Charmian added.
+
+She was still feeling hurt. She had looked upon Susan as her very
+special friend. She had let Susan see into her heart. And now she
+realized that Susan had criticized that heart. At that moment Charmian
+was too unreasonable to remember that criticism is often an
+inevitable movement of the mind which does not touch the soul to change
+it. Her attempt at cordiality was, therefore, forced.
+
+"I don't know whether she will want me," said Susan. "But at any rate I
+shall be there for the first night."
+
+"Ah--the first night!" said Charmian.
+
+Again she changed. With the thought of the coming epoch in her life and
+Claude's her vexation died.
+
+"It's coming so near!" she said. "There are moments when I want to rush
+toward it, and others when I wish it were far away. It's terrible when
+so much hangs on one night, just three or four hours of time. One does
+need courage in art. But Claude has found it. Yes, Susan, you are right.
+Claude is finer than I am. He is beginning to dominate me here, as he
+never dominated me before. If he triumphs--and he will, he shall
+triumph!--I believe I shall be quite at his feet."
+
+She laughed, but tears were not far from her eyes. This period she was
+passing through in New York was tearing at her nerves with teeth and
+claws although she scarcely knew it.
+
+Susan, who had seen clearly the hurt she had inflicted, moved, came
+nearer to Charmian, and gently took one of her hands.
+
+"My dear," she said. "Does it matter so much which it is?"
+
+"Matter! Of course it does. Everything hangs upon it--for us, I mean, of
+course. We have given up everything for the opera, altered our lives. It
+is to be the beginning of everything for us."
+
+Susan looked steadily at Charmian with her ugly, beautiful eyes.
+
+"Perhaps it might be that in either case," she said. "Dear Charmian, I
+think preaching is rather odious. I hope I don't often step into the
+pulpit. But we've talked of many things, of things I care for and
+believe in. May I tell you something I think with the whole of my mind,
+and even more than that as it seems to me?"
+
+"Yes. Yes, Susan!"
+
+"I think the success or failure only matters really as it affects
+character, and the relation existing between your soul and your
+husband's. The rest scarcely counts, I think. And so, if I were to pray
+about such a thing as this opera, pray with the impulse of a friend who
+really does care for you, I should pray that your two souls might have
+what they need, what they must be asking for, whether that is a great
+success, or a great failure."
+
+The door opened and Claude came in on the two women.
+
+"Did I hear the word failure?" he said, smiling, as he went up to Susan
+and took her hand. "Charmian, I wonder you allow it to be spoken in our
+sitting-room."
+
+"I--I didn't--we weren't," she almost stammered. But quickly recovering
+herself, she said:
+
+"Susan has come with a message from Adelaide Shiffney."
+
+"You mean about being let in at a rehearsal?"
+
+"Yes," said Susan.
+
+"I've just been with Mrs. Shiffney. She called at the theater after you
+had gone, Charmian. I drove to the Ritz with her and went in."
+
+Charmian looked narrowly at her husband.
+
+"Then of course she spoke about the rehearsal?"
+
+"Yes. Madame Sennier dropped in upon us. What do you think of that?"
+
+Charmian thought that his face and manner were strangely hard.
+
+"Madame Sennier! And did you stay, did you--"
+
+"Of course. I thanked her for giving the opera such a lift with her
+slanders about the libretto. I tackled her. It was the greatest fun. I
+only wish Crayford had been there to hear me."
+
+"How did she take it?" asked Charmian, glancing at Susan, and feeling
+uncomfortable.
+
+"She was furious, I think. I hope so. I meant her to be. But she didn't
+say much, except that the papers were full of lies, and nobody believed
+them except fools. When she was going I gave her a piece of news to
+comfort her."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"That my opera will be produced the night before her husband's."
+
+Susan got up.
+
+"Well, I must go," she said. "I've been here a long time, and daresay
+you both want to rest."
+
+"Rest!" exclaimed Claude. "That's the last thing we want, isn't it,
+Charmian?"
+
+He helped Susan to put on her fur.
+
+"There's another rehearsal to-night after the performance of _Aida_. You
+see it's a race, and we mean to be in first. I wish you could have seen
+Madame Sennier's face when I told her we should produce on the
+twenty-eighth."
+
+He laughed. But neither Charmian nor Susan laughed with him. As Susan
+was leaving he said:
+
+"You come from the enemy's camp, but you do wish us success, don't you?"
+
+"I have just been telling Charmian what I wish you," answered Susan
+gently, with her straight and quiet look.
+
+"Have you?" He wheeled round to Charmian. "What was it?"
+
+Charmian looked taken aback.
+
+"Oh--what was it?"
+
+"Yes?" said Claude.
+
+"The--the very best! Wasn't it, Susan?"
+
+"Yes. I wished you the very best."
+
+"Capital! Too bad, you are going!"
+
+He went with Susan to the door.
+
+When he came back he said to Charmian:
+
+"Susan Fleet is very quiet, the least obtrusive person I ever met. But
+she's strange. I believe she sees far."
+
+His face and manner had changed. He threw himself down in a chair and
+leaned his head against the back of it.
+
+"I'm going to relax for a minute, Charmian. It's the only way to rest.
+And I shall be up most of the night."
+
+He shut his eyes. His whole body seemed to become loose.
+
+"She sees far, I think," he murmured, scarcely moving his sensitive
+lips.
+
+Charmian sat watching his pale forehead, his white eyelids.
+
+And New York roared outside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+The respective publicity agents of the two opera houses had been so
+energetic in their efforts on behalf of their managements, that, to the
+Senniers, the Heaths, and all those specially interested in the rival
+enterprises, it began to seem as if the whole world hung upon the two
+operas, as if nothing mattered but their success or failure. Charmian
+received all the "cuttings" which dealt with the works and their
+composers, with herself and Madame Sennier, from a newspaper clipping
+bureau. And during these days of furious preparation she read no other
+literature. Whenever she was in the hotel, and not with people, she was
+poring over these articles, or tabulating and arranging them in books.
+The Heaths, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand
+Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath,
+Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph
+Crayford's opinion of Mrs. Charmian Heath, how a clever woman can help
+her husband--was there really anything of importance in this world
+except Charmian and Claude Heath's energy, enterprise, and ultimate
+success?
+
+From the hotel she went to the Opera House. And there she was in the
+midst of a world apart, which seemed to her the whole of the world.
+Everybody whom she met there was concentrated on the opera. She talked
+to orchestral players about the musical effects; to the conductor about
+detail, color, ensemble; to scene-painters about the various "sets,"
+their arrangement, lighting, the gauzes used in them, the properties,
+the back cloths; to machinists about the locusts and other sensations;
+to the singers about their roles; to dancers about their strange Eastern
+poses; to Fakirs about their serpents and their miracles. She lived in
+the opera, as the opera lived in the vast theater. She was, as it were,
+enclosed in a shell within a shell. New York was the great sea murmuring
+outside. And always it was murmuring of the opera. In consequence of
+Jacob Crayford's great opinion of Charmian she was the spoilt child in
+his theater. Her situation there was delightful. Everybody took his cue
+from Crayford. And Crayford's verdict on Charmian was, "She's a
+wonderful little lady. I know her, and I say she's a peach. Heath did
+the cleverest thing he ever did in his life when he married her."
+
+Charmian really had influence with Crayford, and she used it, revelling
+in a sense of her power and importance. He consulted her about many
+points in the performance. And she spoke her mind with decision, growing
+day by day in self-reliance. In the theater she was generally
+surrounded, and she grew to love it as she had never loved any place
+before. The romance and beauty of Djenan-el-Maqui were as nothing in
+comparison with the fascination of the Monster with the Maw, vast, dark,
+and patient, waiting for its evening provender. To Charmian it seemed
+like a great personality. Often she found herself thinking of it as
+sentient, brooding over the opera, secretly attentive to all that was
+going on in connection with it. She loved its darkness, the ghostly
+lightness of the covers spread over it, the ranges of its gaping boxes,
+the far-off mystery of its galleries receding into a heaven of ebon
+blackness. She wandered about it, sitting first here, then there,
+becoming intimate with the monster on whom she sometimes felt as if her
+life and fortunes depended.
+
+"All this we are doing for you!" something within her seemed to whisper.
+"Will you be satisfied with our efforts? Will you reward us?"
+
+And then, in imagination, she saw the monster changed. No longer it
+brooded, watched, considered, waited. It had sprung into ardent life,
+put off its darkness, wrapped itself in a garment of light.
+
+"You have given me what I needed!" she heard it saying. "Look!"
+
+And she saw the crowd!
+
+Then sometimes she shut her eyes. She wanted to feel the crowd, those
+masses of souls in masses of bodies for which she had done so much.
+Always surely they had been keeping the ring for Claude and for her. And
+it seemed to her that, unseen, they had circled the Isle in the far-off
+Algerian garden where she first spoke of her love and desire for Claude,
+that they had ever since been attending upon her life. Had they not
+muttered about the white house that held the worker? Had they not stared
+at the one who sat waiting by the fountain? Had they not seen the
+arrival of Jacob Crayford? Had they not assisted at those long
+colloquies when the opera which was for them was changed? Absurdly, she
+felt as if they had. And now, very soon, it would be for them to speak.
+And striving to shut her eyes more firmly, or pressing her fingers upon
+them, Charmian saw moving hands, a forest of them below, circles above
+circles of them, and in the distance of the gods a mist of them. And she
+saw the shining of thousands of eyes, in which were mirrored strangely,
+almost mystically, souls that Claude's music, conceived in patience and
+labor, had moved and that wished to tell him so.
+
+She saw the crowd! And she saw it returning to listen again. And she
+remembered, with the extraordinary vitality of an ardent woman, who was
+still little more than a girl, how she had sat opposite to the
+white-faced, red-haired heroine on the first night of Jacques Sennier's
+_Paradis Terrestre_; how she had watched her, imaginatively entered into
+her mind, become one with her. That night Claude had written his letter
+to her, Charmian. The force in her, had entered into him, had inspired
+him to do what he did that night, had inspired him to do what he had
+since done always near to her. And soon, very soon, the white-faced,
+red-haired woman would be watching her.
+
+Then something that was almost like an intoxication of the senses,
+something that, though it was born in the mind, seemed intimately
+physical, came upon, rushed over Charmian. It was the intoxication of an
+acute ambition which believed itself close to fulfilment. Life seemed
+very wonderful to her. Scarcely could she imagine anything more
+wonderful than life holding the gift she asked for, the gift something
+in her demanded. And she connected love with ambition, even with
+notoriety. She conceived of a satisfied ambition drawing two human
+beings together, cementing their hearts together, merging their souls in
+one.
+
+"How I shall love Claude triumphant!" she thought exultantly, even
+passionately, as if she were thinking of a man new made, more lovable by
+a big measure than he had been before. And she saw love triumphant with
+wings of flame mounting into the regions of desire, drawing her soul up.
+
+"Claude's triumph will develop me," she thought. "Through it I shall
+become the utmost of which I am capable. I am one of those women who can
+only thrive in the atmosphere of glory."
+
+Claude triumphant, and made triumphant by her! She cherished that
+imagination. She became possessed by it.
+
+Everything conspired to keep that imagination alive and powerful within
+her. Crayford was an enthusiast for the opera, and infected all those
+who belonged to him, who were connected with his magnificent theater,
+with his own enthusiasm. The scene-painter, who had, almost with genius,
+prepared exquisite Eastern pictures, was an enthusiast foreseeing that
+he would gain in the opera the triumph of his career. The machinist was
+"fairly wild" about the opera. Had he not invented the marvellous locust
+effect, which was to be a new sensation? Mr. Mulworth, by dint of
+working with fury and sitting up all night, had become fanatical about
+the opera. He existed only for it. No thought of any other thing could
+find a resting-place in his mind. His "production" was going to be a
+masterpiece such as had never before been known in the history of the
+stage. Nothing had been forgotten. He had brought the East to New York.
+It was inconceivable by him that New York could reject it. He spoke
+about the music, but he meant his "production." The man was a marvel in
+his own line, and such a worker as can rarely be found anywhere. He
+believed the opera was going to mark an epoch in the history of the
+lyric stage. And he said so, almost wildly, in late hours of the night
+to Charmian.
+
+Then there was Alston, who was to have his first great chance in the
+opera, and who grew more fervently believing with each rehearsal.
+
+The great theater was pervaded by optimism, which flowed from the
+fountain-head of its owner. And this optimism percolated through certain
+sections of society in New York, as had been the case in London before
+Sennier's _Paradis Terrestre_ was given for the first time.
+
+Report of the opera was very good. And with each passing day it became
+better.
+
+Charmian remembered what had happened in London, and thought exultantly,
+"Success is in the air."
+
+It certainly seemed to be so. Rumor was busy and spoke kind things.
+Charmian noticed that the manner of many people toward her and Claude
+was becoming increasingly cordial. The pressmen whom she met gave her
+unmistakable indications that they expected great things of her husband.
+Two of them, musical critics both, came to dine with her and Claude one
+night at the St. Regis, and talked music for hours. One of them had
+lived in Paris, and was steeped in modernity. He was evidently much
+interested in Claude's personality, and after dinner, when they had all
+returned from the restaurant to the Heaths' sitting-room, he said to
+Charmian:
+
+"Your husband is the most interesting English personality I have met. He
+is the only Englishman who has ever given to me the feeling of
+strangeness, of the beyond."
+
+He glanced around with his large Southern eyes and saw that there was a
+piano in the room.
+
+"Would he play to us, do you think?" he said, rather tentatively. "I am
+not asking as a pressman but as a keen musician."
+
+"Claude!" Charmian said. "Mr. Van Brinen asks if you will play us a
+little bit of the opera."
+
+Claude got up.
+
+"Why not?" he said.
+
+He spoke firmly. His manner was self-reliant, almost determined. He went
+to the piano, sat down, and played the scene Gillier had liked so much,
+the scene in which some of Said Hitani's curious songs were reproduced.
+The two journalists were evidently delighted.
+
+"That's new!" said Van Brinen. "Nothing like that has ever been heard
+here before. It brings a breath of the East to Broadway."
+
+Claude had turned half round on the piano stool. His eyes were fixed
+upon Van Brinen. And now Van Brinen looked at him. There was an instant
+of silence. Then Claude swung round again to the piano and began to play
+something that was not out of the opera. Charmian had never heard it
+before. But Mrs. Mansfield had heard it.
+
+     "'I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven
+     angels, "Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God
+     upon the earth...."
+
+     "'The second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became
+     as the blood of a dead man....
+
+     "'The fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was
+     given to him to scorch men with fire....
+
+     "'The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river
+     Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the
+     Kings of the East might be prepared....
+
+     "'Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and
+     keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.'"
+
+When Claude ceased there was a silence that seemed long. He remained
+sitting with his back to his wife and his guests, his face to the piano.
+At last he got up and turned, and his eyes again sought the face of Van
+Brinen. Then Van Brinen moved, clasped his long and thin hands tightly
+together, and said:
+
+"That's great! That's very great!"
+
+He paused, gazing at Claude.
+
+"That's enormous!" he said. "Do you mean--is that from the opera?"
+
+"Oh, no!" said Claude.
+
+He came to sit down, and began to talk quickly of all sorts of things.
+When the two pressmen were about to go away Van Brinen said:
+
+"I wish you success, Mr. Heath, as I have very seldom wished it for any
+man. For since I have heard some of your music, I feel that you deserve
+it as very few musicians I know anything of do."
+
+Claude's face flushed painfully, became scarlet.
+
+"Thank you very much," he almost muttered. But he wrung Van Brinen's
+thin hand hard, and when he was alone with Charmian he said:
+
+"Of all the men I have met in New York that is the one I like best."
+
+Van Brinen had considerable influence in the musical world of New York,
+and after that evening he used it on Claude's behalf. The members of the
+art circles of the city had Claude's name perpetually upon their lips.
+Articles began to appear which voiced the great expectation musicians
+were beginning to found upon Claude's work. The "boom" grew, and was no
+longer merely sensational, a noisy thing worked up by paid agents.
+
+Charmian became quickly aware of this and exulted. Now and then she
+remembered her conversation with Susan Fleet and had a moment of doubt,
+of wonder. Now and then a fleeting expression in the pale face of her
+husband, a look in his eyes, a sound in his voice, even a movement, sent
+a slight chill through her heart. But these faintly disagreeable
+sensations passed swiftly from her. The whirling round of life took her,
+swept her on. She had scarcely time to think, though she had always time
+to feel intensely.
+
+Often during these days of fierce preparation she was separated from
+Claude. He had innumerable things to do connected with the production.
+Charmian haunted the opera house, but was seldom actually with Claude
+there, though she often saw him on the stage or in the orchestra, heard
+him discussing points concerning his work. And Claude was very often
+away, when rehearsals did not demand his attention, visiting the singers
+who were to appear in the opera, going through their roles with them,
+trying to imbue them with his exact meaning. Charmian meanwhile was with
+some of the many friends she had made in New York.
+
+Thus it happened that Claude was able to meet Mrs. Shiffney several
+times without Charmian's knowledge.
+
+It was an understood thing--and Charmian knew this--that Mrs. Shiffney
+was to come to the first full rehearsal of the opera. The verdict in
+advance was to be given and taken. Mrs. Shiffney had called once at the
+St. Regis, when Claude was out, and had sat for ten minutes with
+Charmian. And Charmian had called upon her at the Ritz-Carlton and had
+not found her. Here matters had ended in connection with "Adelaide," so
+far as Charmian knew. Mrs. Shiffney had multitudes of friends in New
+York, and was always rushing about. It never occurred to Charmian that
+she had any time to give to Claude, or that Claude had any time to give
+to her. But Mrs. Shiffney always found time to do anything she really
+cared to do. And just now she cared to meet Claude.
+
+Long ago in London, when he was very genuine, she had been attracted by
+him. Now, in New York, when he was dressed up in motley, with painted
+face and eyes that strove, though sometimes in vain, to be false, he
+fascinated her. The new Claude, harder, more dominant, secretly unhappy,
+feverish with a burning excitement of soul and brain, appealed to this
+woman who loved all that was strange, exotic, who hated and despised the
+commonplace, and who lived on excitement.
+
+She threw out one or two lures for Claude, and he, who in London had
+refused her invitations, in New York accepted them. Why did he do this?
+Because he had flung away his real self, because he was secretly angry
+with, hated the self to which he was giving the rein, because he, too,
+during this period was living on excitement, because he longed
+sometimes, with a cruel longing, to raise up a barrier between himself
+and Charmian.
+
+And perhaps there were other reasons that only a physician could have
+explained, reasons connected with tired and irritated nerves, with a
+brain upon which an unnatural strain had been put. The overworked man of
+talent sometimes is confronted with strange figures making strange
+demands upon him. Claude knew these figures now.
+
+He had always been aware of fascination in Mrs. Shiffney. Now he let
+himself go toward this fascination. He had always, too, felt what he had
+called the minotaur-thing in her, the creature with teeth and claws
+fastening upon pleasure. Now he was ready to be with the minotaur-thing.
+For something within him, that was intimately connected with whatever he
+had of genius, murmured incessantly, "To-morrow I die!" And he wanted,
+at any cost, to dull the sound of that voice. Why should not he let his
+monster fasten on pleasure too? The situation was full of a piquancy
+which delighted Mrs. Shiffney. She was "on the other side," and was now
+preparing to make love in the enemy's camp. Nothing pleased her more
+than to mingle art with love, linking the intelligence of her brain with
+the emotion, such as it was, of her thoroughly pagan heart. And the
+feeling that she was a sort of traitress to her beloved Jacques and
+Henriette was quite enchanting. One thing more gave a very feminine zest
+to her pursuit--the thought of Charmian, who knew nothing about it, but
+who, no doubt, would know some day. She rejoiced in intrigue, loved a
+secret that would eventually be hinted at, if not actually told, and
+revelled in proving her power on a man who, in his unknown days, had
+resisted it, and who now that he was on the eve, perhaps, of a wide
+fame, seemed ready to succumb to it. There were even moments when she
+found herself wishing for the success of Claude's opera, despite her
+active dislike of Charmian. It would really be such fun to take Claude
+away from that silly Charmian creature in the very hour of a triumph.
+Yet she did not wish to see Charmian even the neglected wife of a great
+celebrity. Her feelings were rather complex. But she had always been at
+home with complexity.
+
+She managed to get rid of Susan Fleet, by persuading her to visit some
+friends of Susan who lived in Washington. Then it was easy enough to see
+Claude quietly, in her apartment at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and
+elsewhere. Mrs. Shiffney was a past mistress of what she called "playing
+about." Claude recognized this, and had a glimpse into a life strangely
+different from his own, an almost intimate glimpse which both interested
+and disgusted him.
+
+In his determination to grasp at the blatant thing, the big success, a
+determination that pushed him almost inevitably into a certain
+extravagance of conduct, because it was foreign to his innermost nature,
+Claude gave himself to the vulgar vanity of the male. He was out here to
+conquer. Why not conquer Mrs. Shiffney? To do that would be scarcely
+more spurious than to win with a "made over" opera.
+
+He kept secret assignations, which were not openly supposed to be secret
+by either Mrs. Shiffney or himself. For Mrs. Shiffney was leading him
+gently, savoring nuances, while he was feeling blatant, though saved by
+his breeding from showing it. They had some charming, some almost
+exciting talks, full of innuendo, of veiled allusions to personal
+feeling and the human depths. And all this was mingled with art and the
+great life of human ambition. Mrs. Shiffney's attraction to artists was
+a genuine thing in her. She really felt the pull of that which was
+secretly powerful in Claude. And she, not too consciously, made him know
+this. The knowledge drew him toward her.
+
+One day Claude went to see her after a long rehearsal. When he reached
+the hotel it was nearly eight o'clock. The rehearsal of his opera had
+only been stopped because it had been necessary to get ready for the
+evening performance. Claude had promised to dine with Van Brinen that
+night, and Charmian was dining with some friends. But, at the last
+moment, Van Brinen had telephoned to say that he was obliged to go to a
+concert on behalf of his paper. Claude had left the opera house, weary,
+excited, doubtful what to do. If he returned to the St. Regis he would
+be all alone. At that moment he dreaded solitude. After hesitating for a
+moment outside the stage door, he called a taxi-cab, and ordered the man
+to drive to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney would probably be out, would almost certainly have some
+engagement for the evening. The hour was unorthodox for a visit. Claude
+did not care. He had been drowned in his own music for hours. He was in
+a strongly emotional condition, and wanted to do something strange,
+something bizarre.
+
+He sent up his name to Mrs. Shiffney, who was at home. In a few moments
+she sent down to say she would see him in her sitting-room. When Claude
+came into it he found her there in an evening gown.
+
+"Do forgive me! You're going out?" he said.
+
+"Where are you dining?" she answered.
+
+Claude made a vague gesture.
+
+"Have you come to dine with me?" she said, smiling.
+
+"But I see you are going out!"
+
+She shook her powerful head.
+
+"We will dine up here. But I must telephone to a number in Fifth
+Avenue."
+
+She went toward the telephone.
+
+"Oh, but I can't keep you at home. It is too outrageous!" he said.
+
+"Give me time to telephone!" she answered, looking round at him over her
+shoulder.
+
+"You are much too kind!" he said. "I--I looked in to settle about your
+coming to that rehearsal."
+
+She got on to the number in Fifth Avenue and spoke through the telephone
+softly.
+
+"There! That's done! And now help me to order a dinner for--" she
+glanced at him shrewdly--"a tired genius."
+
+Claude smiled. They consulted together, amicably arranging the menu.
+
+The dinner was brought quickly, and they sat down, one on each side of a
+round table decorated with lilies of the valley.
+
+"I'm playing traitress to-night," Mrs. Shiffney said in her deep voice.
+"I was to have been at a dinner arranged for the Senniers by Mrs.
+Algernon Batsford."
+
+"I am so ashamed."
+
+"Or are you a little bit flattered?"
+
+"Both, perhaps."
+
+"A divinely complex condition. Tell me about the rehearsal."
+
+They plunged into a discussion on music. Mrs. Shiffney was a past
+mistress in the art of subtle flattery, when she chose to be. And she
+always chose to be, in the service of her caprices. She understood well
+the vanity of the artistic temperament. She even understood its reverse
+side, which was strongly developed in Claude. Her efforts were dedicated
+to the dual temperament, and beautifully. The discussion was long and
+animated, lasting all through dinner to the time of Turkish coffee.
+Claude forgot his fatigue, and Mrs. Shiffney almost forgot her caprice.
+She became genuinely interested in the discussion merely as a
+discussion. Her sincere passion for art got the upper hand in her. And
+this made her the more delightful. The evening fled and its feet were
+winged.
+
+"I was going to a party at Eve Inness's," she said, when half-past ten
+chimed in the clock on her writing-table. "But I'll give it up."
+
+Claude sprang to his feet.
+
+"Really you must not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount
+of sleep to make up arrears."
+
+"You don't look sleepy."
+
+"How could I, in New York?"
+
+"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite
+definitely given up."
+
+"But--"
+
+Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he
+remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had
+looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now
+he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he
+felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look
+he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have
+won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels
+it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:
+
+"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The
+two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all
+this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think--" he
+paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.
+But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you
+genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"
+
+After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:
+
+"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."
+
+Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked
+absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something
+strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just
+then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or
+desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by
+this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature
+intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her
+either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for
+Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.
+
+"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.
+
+And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature
+deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude
+felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true
+self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish
+pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment
+was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.
+Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was
+certainly the cry of the real man in Claude. And he had to heed it. But
+he loathed himself at this moment. And he felt that he had given Mrs.
+Shiffney the right to hate him for ever.
+
+"My weakness is my curse!" he thought. "It makes me utterly
+contemptible. I must slay it!"
+
+Desperation seized him. Abruptly he got up.
+
+"You are much too kind!" he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
+"I can never be grateful enough to you. If I--if I do succeed, I shall
+know at any rate that one--" He met her eyes and stopped.
+
+"Good-night!" she said. "I'm afraid I must send you away now, for I
+believe I will run in for a minute to Eve Inness, after all."
+
+As Claude descended to the hall he knew that he had left an enemy behind
+him.
+
+But the knowledge which really troubled him was that he deserved to have
+Mrs. Shiffney for an enemy.
+
+His own self, his own manhood, whipped him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+That night, when Claude arrived at the St. Regis, Charmian was still
+out. She did not return till just after midnight. When she came into the
+sitting-room she found Claude in an armchair near the window, which was
+slightly open. He had no book or paper, and seemed to be listening to
+something.
+
+"Claudie! Why, what are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing," he said.
+
+"But the window! Aren't you catching cold?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I believe you were listening to 'New York'!" she continued, taking off
+her cloak.
+
+"I was."
+
+She put her cloak down on the sofa.
+
+"Listening for the verdict?" she said. "Trying to divine what it will
+be?"
+
+"Something like that, perhaps."
+
+"There is still a good deal of the child in you, Claude," she said
+seriously, but fondly too.
+
+"Is there? Too much perhaps," he answered in a low voice.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you feeling depressed?"
+
+She sat down close to him.
+
+"Are you doubtful, anxious to-night?"
+
+"Well, this is rather an anxious time. The strain is strong."
+
+"But you are strong, too!"
+
+"I!" he exclaimed.
+
+And there was in his voice a sound of great bitterness.
+
+"Yes, I think you are. I know you are."
+
+"You have very little reason for knowing such a thing," he answered,
+still with bitterness.
+
+"You mean?"--she was looking at him almost furtively. "Whatever you
+mean," she concluded, "I can't help it! I think you are. Or perhaps I
+really mean that I think you would be."
+
+"Would be! When?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know! In a great moment, a terrible moment perhaps!"
+
+She dropped her eyes, and began slowly to pull off her gloves.
+
+"Talking of the verdict," she said presently, glancing toward the still
+open window, "is the date of the first full rehearsal fixed?"
+
+"Yes. We decided on it this evening at the theater."
+
+"When is it to be?"
+
+"Next Friday night. There's no performance that night. We begin at six.
+I daresay we shall get through about six the next morning."
+
+"Friday! Have you--I mean, are you going to ask Mrs. Shiffney?"
+
+During their long and intimate talk at dinner that evening Claude had
+invited Mrs. Shiffney to be present at the rehearsal, and she had
+accepted. Now it suddenly occurred to him that she was his enemy. Would
+she still come after what had occurred just before he left her?
+
+"I have asked her!" he almost blurted out.
+
+"Already! When?"
+
+"I went round to the Ritz-Carlton t-night."
+
+"Was she in?"
+
+"Yes. But she was--but she went out afterward, to Mrs. Inness."
+
+"Oh! And did she accept?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Charmian's eyes were fixed upon Claude. He saw by their expression that
+she suspected something, or that she had divined a secret between him
+and Mrs. Shiffney. She looked suddenly alert, and her lips seemed to
+harden, giving her face a strained and not pleasant expression.
+
+"How is she coming?" she asked.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Yes. Are you going to fetch her? Or am I to?"
+
+"That wasn't decided. Nothing was said about that."
+
+"She can't just walk in alone, without a card to admit her, or anything.
+You know what an autocrat Mr. Crayford is."
+
+"But he knows Mrs. Shiffney. We met him first at her house in London,
+don't you remember?"
+
+"You don't suppose he's going to let everyone he knows into a rehearsal,
+do you?"
+
+Claude got up from his chair.
+
+"No. But--Charmian, I can't think of all these details. I can't--I
+can't!"
+
+There was a sharp edge to his voice.
+
+"I have too much to carry in my mind just now."
+
+"I know," she said, softening. "I didn't mean"--the alert expression,
+which for an instant had vanished, returned to her face--"I only wanted
+to know--"
+
+"Please don't ask me any more! I asked Mrs. Shiffney to come to the
+rehearsal. She said she would. Then we talked of other things."
+
+"Other things! Then you stayed some time?"
+
+"A little while. If she really wishes to be at the rehearsal--"
+
+"But we know she wishes it!"
+
+"Well, then, she will suggest coming with you, or she may write to
+Crayford. I'm not going to do anything more about it."
+
+His face was stern, grim.
+
+"Now I'll shut the window," he added, "or you'll catch cold in that low
+dress."
+
+He was moving to the window when she caught at his hand and detained
+him.
+
+"Would you care if I did? Would you care if I were ill?"
+
+"Of course I should."
+
+"Would you care if I--"
+
+She did not finish the sentence, but still held his hand closely in
+hers. In her hand-grasp Claude felt jealousy, warm, fiery, a thing
+almost strangely vital.
+
+"Does she--is she getting to love me as I wish to be loved?"
+
+The question flashed through his mind. At that moment he was very glad
+that he had never betrayed Charmian, very glad of the Puritan in him
+which perhaps many women would jeer at, did they know of its existence.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "let me shut the window."
+
+"Yes, yes; of course."
+
+She let his hand go.
+
+"It is better not to listen to the voices," she added. "They make one
+feel too much!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Nothing more was said by Charmian or Claude about Mrs. Shiffney and the
+rehearsal. Mrs. Shiffney made no sign. The rehearsals of Jacques
+Sennier's new opera were being pressed forward almost furiously, and no
+doubt she had little free time. Claude wondered very much what she would
+do, debated the question with himself. Surely now she would not wish to
+come to his rehearsal! And even if she did wish to be present, surely
+she would not try to come now! But women are not easily to be read.
+Claude was aware that he could not divine what Mrs. Shiffney would do.
+He thought, however, that it was unlikely she would come. He thought
+also that he wished her not to come.
+
+Nevertheless, when the darkness gathered over New York on Friday
+evening, he found himself wishing strongly, even almost painfully, for
+her verdict.
+
+Charmian was greatly excited. Claude still kept up his successful
+pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to
+conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by
+anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished
+by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching.
+She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering
+moments, not far off, when he had shown a sort of furtive bitterness, or
+weariness, or depression, when she had partially divined a blackness of
+the depths. Now his self-confidence lifted her, and she told him so.
+
+"There's an atmosphere of success round you," she said.
+
+"Why not? We are going to reap the fruits of our labors," he replied.
+
+"But even Alston is terribly nervous to-day."
+
+"Is he? My hand is as steady as a rock."
+
+He held it out, by a fierce effort kept it perfectly still for a moment,
+then let it drop against his side.
+
+The bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock.
+
+"Only an hour and we begin!" said Charmian. "Oh, Claude! This is almost
+worse than the performance."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know. Perhaps because it won't be final. And then they say at
+dress rehearsals things always go badly, and everyone thinks the piece,
+or the opera, is bound to be a failure. I feel wrinkles and gray hairs
+pouring over me in spite of your self-possession. I can't help it!"
+
+She forced a laugh. She was walking about the room.
+
+"I'm devoured by nerves, I suppose!" she exclaimed. "By the way, hasn't
+Mrs. Shiffney written about coming to-night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You haven't seen her again?"
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"How very odd! Do you suppose she will try to get in?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"But isn't it strange, after her making such a fuss about coming--this
+silence?"
+
+"Probably she's immersed in Sennier's opera and won't bother about
+mine."
+
+"Women always bother."
+
+There was a "b-r-r-r!" in the lobby. Charmian started violently.
+
+"What can that be?"
+
+Claude went to the door, and returned with Armand Gillier.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur Gillier!"
+
+Charmian looked at Gillier's large and excited eyes.
+
+"You are coming with us?"
+
+"If you allow me, madame!" said Gillier formally, bowing over her hand.
+"It seems to me that the collaborators should go together."
+
+"Of course. It's still early, but we may as well start. The theater's
+pulling at me--pulling!"
+
+"My wife's quite strung up!" said Claude, smiling.
+
+"And Claude is disgustingly cool!" said Charmian.
+
+Gillier looked hard at Claude, and Charmian thought she detected
+admiration in his eyes.
+
+"Men need to be cool when the critical moment is at hand," he remarked.
+"I learned that long ago in Algeria."
+
+"Then you are not nervous now?"
+
+"Nerves are for women!" he returned.
+
+But the expression in his face belied his words.
+
+"Claude is cooler than he is!" Charmian thought.
+
+She went to put on her hat and her sealskin coat. She longed, yet
+dreaded to start.
+
+When they arrived at the stage-door of the Opera House the dark young
+man came from his office on the right with his hands full of letters,
+and, smiling, distributed them to Charmian, Claude and Gillier.
+
+"It will be a go!" he said, in a clear voice. "Everyone says so. Mr.
+Crayford is up in his office. He wants to see Mr. Heath. There's the
+elevator!"
+
+At this moment the lift appeared, sinking from the upper regions under
+the guidance of a smiling colored man.
+
+"I'll come up with you, Claudie. Are you going on the stage, Monsieur
+Gillier?"
+
+"No, madame, not yet. I must speak to Mademoiselle Mardon about the
+Ouled Nail scene."
+
+People were hurrying in, looking preoccupied. In a small abode on the
+left, a little way from the outer door, an elderly man in uniform, with
+a square gray beard, sat staring out through a small window, with a
+cautious and important air.
+
+Charmian and Claude stepped into the lift, holding their letters. As
+they shot up they both glanced hastily at the addresses.
+
+"Nothing from Adelaide Shiffney!" said Charmian. "Have you got
+anything?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then she can't be coming."
+
+"It seems not."
+
+"I--then we shan't have the verdict in advance."
+
+The lift stopped, and they got out.
+
+"If we had it would probably have been a wrong one," said Claude. "The
+only real verdict is the one the great public gives."
+
+"Yes, of course. But, still--"
+
+"Hulloh, little lady! So you're sticking to the ship till she's safe in
+port!"
+
+Crayford met them in the doorway of his large and elaborately furnished
+sanctum.
+
+"Come right in! There's a lot to talk about. Shut the door, Harry. Now,
+Mulworth, let's get to business. What is it that is wrong with the music
+to go with the Fakir scene?"
+
+At six o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not
+begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the
+dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And
+from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and
+persistent hammerings.
+
+A very few people were scattered about in the huge space which contained
+the stalls, some nondescript men, whispering to each other, or yawning
+and staring vaguely; and five or six women who looked more alert and
+vivacious. There was no one visible in the shrouded boxes. The lights
+were kept very low.
+
+The sound of hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness
+and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great
+monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign
+lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments,
+and talked together in their sunken habitation.
+
+Seven o'clock struck in the clocks of New York. Just as the chimes died
+away, Mrs. Shiffney drew up at the stage-door in a smart white
+motor-car. She was accompanied by a very tall and big man, with a robust
+air of self-confidence, and a face that was clean-shaven and definitely
+American.
+
+"I don't suppose they've begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked
+slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black
+sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?"
+
+"Here!" said the big man in a big voice.
+
+The dark young man came from his office. On seeing the big man he
+started, and looked impressed.
+
+"Mr. Crayford here?" said the big man.
+
+"I think he's on the stage."
+
+"Could you be good enough to send him in my card? There's some writing
+on the back. And here's a note from this lady."
+
+"Certainly, with pleasure," said the young man, with his cheerful smile.
+"Come right into the office, if you will!"
+
+"Hulloh!" said Crayford, a moment later to Claude. "Here's Mrs. Shiffney
+wants to be let in to the rehearsal! And whom with, d'you think?"
+
+"Whom?" asked Claude quickly. "Not Madame Sennier?"
+
+"Jonson Ramer."
+
+"The financier?"
+
+"Our biggest! My boy, you're booming! Old Jonson Ramer asking to come in
+to our rehearsal! We'll have that all over the States to-morrow morning.
+Where's Cane?"
+
+"I'll fetch him, sir!" said a thin boy standing by.
+
+"Are you going to let them in?"
+
+"Am I going to! Finnigan, go and take the lady and Mr. Ramer to any box
+they like. Ah, Cane! Here's something for you to let yourself out over!"
+
+Mr. Cane read Ramer's card and looked radiant.
+
+"Well, I'm--!"
+
+"I should think you are! Go and spread it. This boy's getting
+compliments enough to turn him silly."
+
+And Crayford clapped Claude almost affectionately on the shoulder.
+
+"Now then, Mulworth!" he roared, with a complete change of manner. "When
+in thunder are we going to have that curtain up?"
+
+Claude turned away. He wished to find Charmian, to tell her that Mrs.
+Shiffney had come and had brought Jonson Ramer with her. But he did not
+know where she was. As he came off the stage into the wings he met
+Alston Lake dressed for his part of an officer of Spahis.
+
+"I say, Claude, have you heard?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Jonson Ramer's here for the rehearsal!"
+
+"I know. Can you tell me where Charmian is?"
+
+"Haven't an idea! There's the prelude beginning! My! Where are my
+formamints?"
+
+Charmian meanwhile had gone into the theater with a dressmaker, who had
+come to see the effect of Enid Mardon's costumes which she had
+"created." Charmian and the dressmaker, a massive and handsome woman,
+were sitting together in the stalls, discussing Enid Mardon's caprices.
+
+"She tore the dress to pieces," said the dressmaker. "She made rags of
+it, and then pinned it together all wrong, and said to me--to
+_me_!--that now it began to look like an Ouled Nail girl's costume. I
+told her if she liked to face Noo York--"
+
+"H'sh-sh!" whispered Charmian. "There's the prelude beginning at last.
+She's not going to--?"
+
+"No. Of course she had to come back to my original idea!"
+
+And the dressmaker pressed a large handkerchief against her handsome
+nose, savored the last new perfume, and leaned back in her stall
+magisterially with a faint smile.
+
+It was at this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of
+the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat
+she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space
+before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat
+within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat
+back a little farther in the box, and whispered to Mr. Ramer.
+
+"Are you really going to join the Directorate of the Metropolitan?" she
+said.
+
+"I may, when this season's over."
+
+"Does Crayford know it?"
+
+Mr. Ramer shook his massive and important head.
+
+"I'm not certain of it myself," he observed, with a smile.
+
+"And if you do join?"
+
+"If I decide to join"--he glanced round the enormous empty house. "I
+think I should buy Crayford out of here."
+
+"Would he go?"
+
+"I think he might--for a price."
+
+"If this new man turns out to be worth while, I suppose you would take
+him over as one of the--what are they called--one of the assets?"
+
+"Ha!" He leaned toward her, and just touched her arm with one of his
+powerful hands. "You must tell me to-night whether he is going to be
+worth while."
+
+"Won't you know?"
+
+"I might when I got him before a New York audience. But you are more
+likely to know to-night."
+
+"I have got rather a flair, I believe. Now--I'll taste the new work."
+
+She did not speak again, but gave herself up to attention, though her
+mind was often with the woman in the sealskin coat who sat so near to
+her. Had Claude said anything to that woman? There was very little to
+say. But--had he said it? She wondered on what terms Charmian and Claude
+were, whether the Puritan had ever found any passion for the
+Charmian-creature. Claude's music broke in upon her questionings.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney had a retentive as well as a swift mind, and she
+remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto.
+In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where
+there is still romance, still strangeness--a land upon which
+civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined
+the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might
+produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were helped by
+powerful music.
+
+Now she listened, waited, remembering her visits to Mullion House, the
+night in the cafe by the city wall when Said Hitani and his Arabs
+played, the hour of sun in the pine wood above the great ravine, other
+hours in New York. There was something in Heath that she had wanted,
+that she wanted still, though part of her sneered at him, laughed at
+him, had a worldly contempt for him, though another part of her almost
+hated him. She desired a fiasco for him. Nevertheless the art feeling
+within her, and the greedy emotional side of her, demanded the success
+of his effort just now, because she was listening, because she hated to
+be bored, because the libretto was fine. The artistic side of her nature
+was in strong conflict with the capricious and sensual side that
+evening. But she looked--for Jonson Ramer--coolly self-possessed and
+discriminating as she sat very still in the shadow.
+
+"That's a fine voice!" murmured Ramer presently.
+
+Alston Lake was singing.
+
+"Yes. I've heard him in London. But he seems to have come on
+wonderfully."
+
+"It's an operatic voice."
+
+When Alston Lake went off the stage Ramer remarked:
+
+"That's a fellow to watch."
+
+"Crayford's very clever at discovering singers."
+
+"Almost too clever for the Metropolitan, eh?"
+
+"Enid Mardon looks wonderful."
+
+Silence fell upon them again.
+
+The dressmaker had got up from her seat and slipped away into the
+darkness, after examining Enid Mardon's costume for two or three minutes
+through a small but powerful opera-glass. Charmian was now quite alone.
+
+While the massive woman was with her Charmian had been unconscious of
+any agitating, or disturbing influence in her neighborhood. The
+dressmaker had probably a strong personality. Very soon after she had
+gone Charmian began to feel curiously uneasy, despite her intense
+interest in the music, and in all that was happening on the stage. She
+glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
+front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
+places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
+stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
+compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
+felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
+to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
+On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
+at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
+that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
+to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
+occupied.
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"
+
+Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
+he?
+
+Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
+in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
+sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
+while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
+Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
+which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
+anger.
+
+"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
+me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
+not with me."
+
+And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
+out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
+imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
+certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the
+heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
+landmarks.
+
+The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
+Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
+Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
+in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
+the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
+Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
+subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
+moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
+done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.
+
+"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
+exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
+had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
+the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
+at whose feet he was laying his homage.
+
+Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.
+
+She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.
+
+"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
+come!"
+
+But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
+was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
+toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
+she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
+woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
+conversation with another person who was hidden.
+
+Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.
+
+Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
+from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
+blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
+Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
+that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
+one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
+a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
+Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
+knew say:
+
+"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
+to take care of, you must remember."
+
+The words ended in a little laugh.
+
+"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.
+
+For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
+sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
+her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
+slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
+four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
+almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
+abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
+the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
+walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
+again.
+
+"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had
+Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a
+strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She
+did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together
+into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
+"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice
+seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again
+turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly
+this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.
+
+"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.
+
+In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never
+seen before, getting up from a chair.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know--"
+
+"Charmian! Is it you?"
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's voice came from beyond the big man.
+
+"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"
+
+"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath,
+Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute,
+Charmian."
+
+Adelaide Shiffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But
+Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the
+invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.
+
+But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the
+birth of another.
+
+"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak
+carelessly.
+
+Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he
+liked pretty women even more than most men do.
+
+"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can
+judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."
+
+"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she
+wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.
+
+"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. Shiffney. "She will make a
+sensation. And the _mise-en-scene_ is really exquisite, not overloaded.
+Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."
+
+"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the
+music simply because she knows I only care about that."
+
+She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm
+Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.
+
+"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."
+
+Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was
+quite sure of success.
+
+"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said
+Charmian.
+
+"That is a little late. But--"
+
+At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left
+entrance near the stage.
+
+"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. Shiffney, and
+evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"
+
+She was gone.
+
+"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do
+you know, Jonson?"
+
+"Seems to me that little woman's unfashionable--mad about her own
+husband!" said Jonson Ramer.
+
+The curtain went up on the second act.
+
+Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a
+seat at his side and touched his hand.
+
+"Claude, where have you been?"
+
+Her long fingers closed on his hand.
+
+"Charmian!"
+
+He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+His face changed.
+
+"Nothing. It's all going well so far."
+
+"Perfectly. Adelaide Shiffney's here."
+
+"I know."
+
+Charmian's fingers unclasped.
+
+"You've seen her?"
+
+"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."
+
+"Yes. I've--"
+
+They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes
+they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his
+coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously,
+attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with
+their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.
+
+Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide
+Shiffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.
+Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She
+clasped the two arms of her stall.
+
+Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The
+orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the
+watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated
+determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.
+
+"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.
+
+Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance
+and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in
+an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in
+silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long
+colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian
+presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a
+snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
+Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
+breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
+would go badly.
+
+"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
+talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
+gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
+only people--"
+
+Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
+Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and
+caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
+defensive.
+
+"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
+"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
+least."
+
+"Possibly, madame!" he replied.
+
+He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
+eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
+thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
+stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
+not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
+always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
+ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
+with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
+megalomania.
+
+Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
+comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
+nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
+strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
+greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.
+
+The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
+felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
+act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
+creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
+the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
+about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
+picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
+listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
+felt both dull and excited.
+
+"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
+pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."
+
+Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden
+flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to
+writhe with secret irritation.
+
+"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her
+companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."
+
+"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the
+dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since--"
+
+"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."
+
+As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the
+boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the
+financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?
+She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled
+swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have
+gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that
+moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child
+ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.
+Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved
+that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her
+cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected
+the mysterious region from the banality she had left.
+
+But there she was again carried from mood to mood.
+
+She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.
+His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.
+
+"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are
+bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and
+will go down as easily as a--Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors
+right for the locust scene?"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rushing toward the
+wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.
+"_Mister_ Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you
+think?"
+
+"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If they're not
+made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light
+on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think--"
+
+"_Signora--ma si! Ma si!_"
+
+He escaped.
+
+"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"
+
+Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
+the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
+hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
+pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.
+
+"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
+eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."
+
+"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
+Gillier told me--"
+
+"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
+you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
+the third act?"
+
+"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
+Alston Lake.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."
+
+"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"
+
+"Alston, I must tell you--you're an absolute darling!"
+
+She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.
+
+"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.
+
+Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
+Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
+good things?
+
+Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
+masterpiece.
+
+Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
+being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look
+forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
+at an end."
+
+But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
+an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
+The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
+"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
+was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
+chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
+had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.
+
+"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
+in the morning.
+
+She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
+the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
+lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.
+
+"What does it matter? I don't care!"
+
+The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
+wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss
+Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.
+
+"This," said Charmian to herself, "is my idea of Hell."
+
+She felt that she was being punished for every sin, however tiny, that
+she had ever committed. She longed to creep away and hide. She thought
+of all she had done to bring about the opera, of the flight from
+England, of the life at Djenan-el-Maqui, of the grand hopes that had
+lived in the little white house above the sea.
+
+"Start it again, I tell you!" roared Crayford. "We can't stand here all
+night to hear you talking!"
+
+"Yes," a voice within Charmian said, "this is Hell!"
+
+She bent her head. She felt like one sinking down.
+
+When the act was over she went out at once. She was afraid of Mrs.
+Shiffney.
+
+The smiling colored man took her up in the elevator to a room where she
+found Claude in his shirt sleeves, with a cup of black coffee beside
+him, working at the score. He looked up.
+
+"Charmian! I've just finished all I can do to-night. What's the time?"
+
+"Nearly two."
+
+"Did the third act go well?"
+
+She looked at his white face and burning eyes.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Sit down. You look tired."
+
+He went on working.
+
+Just as two o'clock struck he finished, and got up from the table over
+which he had been leaning for hours.
+
+"Come along! Let's go down. Oh!"
+
+He stopped, and drank the black coffee.
+
+"By the way," he said, "won't you have some?"
+
+"Yes," she said eagerly.
+
+He rang and ordered some for her. While they were waiting for it she
+said:
+
+"What an experience this is!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How quietly you take it!"
+
+"We're in for it. It would be no use to lose one's head."
+
+"No, of course! But--oh, what a fight it is. I can scarcely believe that
+in a few days it must be over, that we shall _know_!"
+
+"Here's the coffee. Drink it up."
+
+She drank it. They went down in the lift. As they parted--for Claude had
+to go to Meroni--Charmian said:
+
+"Adelaide Shiffney's still here."
+
+"If she stays to the end we must find out what she thinks."
+
+"Or--shall we leave it? After all--"
+
+"No, no! I wish to hear her opinion."
+
+There was a hard dry sound in his voice.
+
+"Very well."
+
+Claude disappeared.
+
+The black coffee which Charmian had drunk excited her. But it helped
+her. As she went back into the theater for the fourth and last act she
+felt suddenly stronger, more hopeful. She was able to say to herself,
+"This is only a rehearsal. Rehearsals always go badly. If they don't
+actors and singers think it a bad sign. Of course the opera cannot sound
+really well when they keep stopping." Another thing helped her now. She
+was joined by Alston Lake who was not on in the last act. He took her to
+a box and they ensconced themselves in it together. Then he produced
+from the capacious pockets of his overcoat a box of delicious sandwiches
+and a small bottle of white wine. The curtain was still down. They had
+time for a gay little supper.
+
+How Charmian enjoyed it and Alston's optimism! The world changed. She
+saw everything in another light. She ate, drank, talked, laughed. Mrs.
+Shiffney and Ramer had vanished from the stalls, but Alston said they
+were still in the theater. They were having supper, too, in one of the
+lobbies. Crayford had just gone to see them.
+
+"And is he satisfied?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He says it's coming out all right."
+
+"But it can't be ready by the date he's fixed for the first night!"
+
+"Yes, it can. It's got to be."
+
+"Well, I don't see how it can be."
+
+"It will be. Crayford has said so. And that settles it."
+
+"What an extraordinary man he is!"
+
+"He's a great man!"
+
+"Alston!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Charmian?"
+
+"He wouldn't make a great mistake, would he?"
+
+"A mistake!"
+
+"I mean a huge mistake."
+
+"Not he! There goes the curtain at last."
+
+"And there's Adelaide Shiffney coming in again. She is going to stay to
+the end. If only this act goes well!"
+
+She shut her eyes for a minute and found herself praying. The coffee,
+the little supper had revived her. She felt renewed. All fatigue had
+left her. She was alert, intent, excited, far more self-possessed than
+she had been at any other period of the night. And she felt strongly
+responsive. The power of Gillier's libretto culminated in the last act,
+which was short, fierce, concentrated, and highly dramatic. In it Enid
+Mardon had a big acting chance. She and Gillier had become great allies,
+on account of her admiration of his libretto. Gillier, who had been
+with her many times during the night, now slipped into the front row of
+the stalls to watch his divinity.
+
+"There's Gillier!" whispered Charmian. "He's mad about Miss Mardon."
+
+"She's a great artist."
+
+"I know. But, oh, how I hate her!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+But Charmian would not tell him. And now they gave themselves to the
+last act.
+
+It went splendidly, without a hitch. After the misery of the third act
+this successful conclusion was the more surprising. It swept away all
+Charmian's doubts. She frankly exulted. It even seemed to her that never
+at any time had she felt any doubts about the fate of the opera. From
+the first its triumph had been a foregone conclusion. From the abysses
+she floated up to the peaks and far above them.
+
+"Oh, Alston, it's too wonderful!" she exclaimed. "If only there were
+someone to applaud!"
+
+"There'll be a crowd in a few days."
+
+"How glorious! How I long to see them, the dear thousands shouting for
+Claude. I must go to Adelaide Shiffney. I must catch her before she
+goes. There can't be two opinions. An act like that is irresistible.
+Oh!"
+
+She almost rushed out of the box.
+
+In the stalls she came upon Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer who were
+standing up ready to go. A noise of departure came up from the hidden
+orchestra. Voices were shouting behind the scenes. In a moment the
+atmosphere of the vast theater seemed to have entirely changed. Night
+and the deadness of slumber seemed falling softly, yet heavily, about
+it. The musicians were putting their instruments into cases and bags. A
+black cat stole furtively unseen along a row of stalls, heading away
+from Charmian.
+
+"So you actually stayed to the end!" Charmian said.
+
+Her eyes were fastened on Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+"Oh, yes. We couldn't tear ourselves away, could we, Mr. Ramer?"
+
+"No, indeed!"
+
+"The last act is the best of all," Mrs. Shiffney said.
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" said Charmian.
+
+There was a slight pause. Then Ramer said:
+
+"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband
+unfortunately, but--"
+
+"Here he is!" said Charmian.
+
+At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought,
+unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much
+drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.
+
+"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to
+Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did
+it?"
+
+"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."
+
+She introduced the two men to one another.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work--most
+interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and
+glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile.
+"And how admirably put on!"
+
+He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.
+
+"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.
+
+And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in
+the opera with a great deal of deftness.
+
+"As to Alston Lake, he quite astonished us!" she said presently. "He is
+going to be a huge success."
+
+She discussed the singers, showing her usual half-slipshod
+discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness.
+
+"Altogether," she concluded, "it has been a most interesting and unusual
+evening. Ah, there is Monsieur Gillier!"
+
+Gillier came up and received congratulations. His expression was very
+strange. It seemed to combine something that was morose with a sort of
+exultation. Once he shot a half savage glance at Claude. He raved about
+Enid Mardon.
+
+"We are going round to see her!" Mrs. Shiffney said. "Come, Mr. Ramer!"
+
+Quickly she wished Charmian and Claude good-night.
+
+"All my congratulations!" she said. "And a thousand wishes for a triumph
+on the first night. By the way, will it really be on the twenty-eighth,
+do you think?"
+
+"I believe so," said Claude.
+
+"Can it be ready?"
+
+"We mean to try."
+
+"Ah, you are workers! And Mr. Crayford's a wonder. Good-night, dear
+Charmian! What a night for you!"
+
+She buttoned her sable coat at the neck and went away with Ramer and
+Armand Gillier.
+
+As she turned to the right in the corridor she murmured to Gillier:
+
+"Why didn't you give it to Jacques? Oh, the pity of it!"
+
+Claude and Charmian said scarcely anything as they drove to their hotel.
+Charmian lay back in the taxi-cab with shut eyes, her temples throbbing.
+But when they were in their sitting-room she came close to her husband,
+and said:
+
+"Claude, I want to ask you something."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Have you had a quarrel with Adelaide Shiffney?"
+
+Claude hesitated.
+
+"A quarrel?"
+
+"Yes. Have you given her any reason--just lately--to dislike you
+personally, to hate you perhaps?"
+
+"What should make you think so?"
+
+"Please answer me!" Her voice had grown sharp.
+
+"Perhaps I have. But please don't ask me anything more, Charmian. If you
+do, I cannot answer you."
+
+"Now I understand!" she exclaimed, almost passionately.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why she turned down her thumb at the opera."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Claude, she did, she did! You know she did! There was not one real word
+for you from either her or Mr. Ramer, not one! We've had her verdict.
+But what is it worth? Nothing! Less than nothing! You've told me why.
+All her cleverness, all her discrimination has failed her, just
+because--oh, we women are contemptible sometimes! It's no use our
+pretending we aren't. Claude, I'm glad--I'm thankful you've made her
+hate you. And I know how!"
+
+"Hush! Don't let us talk about it."
+
+"Poor Adelaide! How mad she will be on the twenty-eighth when she hears
+how the public take it!"
+
+Claude only said:
+
+"If we are ready."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Jacob Crayford was not the man to be beaten when he had set his heart
+on, put his hand to, any enterprise. On the day he had fixed upon for
+the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At
+the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every
+stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford
+to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its
+work, the singers were "at home" in their parts. How it had all been
+accomplished in the short time Charmian did not understand. It seemed to
+her almost as if she had assisted at the accomplishment of the
+incredible, as if she had seen a miracle happen. She was obliged to
+believe in it after the final rehearsal, which was, so Crayford, Mr.
+Mulworth, Meroni, and it was even rumored Jimber declared, the most
+perfect rehearsal they had ever been present at.
+
+"Exactly three hours and a half!" Crayford had remarked when the curtain
+came down on the fourth act. "So we come ahead of the Metropolitan. I've
+just heard they've had a set back with Sennier's opera; can't produce
+for nearly a week after the date they'd settled. We needn't have been in
+such a devil of a hurry after all. But we've got the laugh on them now.
+Sennier's first opera was a white man. No doubt about that. But the
+hoodoo seems out against this one. I tell you"--he had swung round to
+Claude, who had just come upon the stage--"I'd rather have this opera of
+yours than Sennier's, although he's known all over creation and you're
+nothing but a boom-boy up to now. I used to believe in names, but upon
+my word seems to me the public's changing. Give 'em the goods and they
+don't care where they come from."
+
+His eyes twinkled as he added, clapping Claude on the shoulder:
+
+"All very well for you now, my boy! But you'll wish it was the other
+way, p'raps, when you come round to the stage door with your next opera
+on offer!"
+
+He was in grand spirits. He had "licked" the Metropolitan to a "frazzle"
+over the date of production, and he was going to "lick them to a
+frazzle" with the production. Every reserved seat in the house was sold
+for Claude's first night. Crayford stepped on air.
+
+In the afternoon of the day of production, when Charmian and Claude,
+shut up in their apartment at the St. Regis, and denied to all visitors,
+were trying to rest, and were pretending to be quite calm, a note was
+brought in from Mrs. Shiffney. It was addressed to Charmian, and
+contained a folded slip of green paper, which fell to the ground as she
+opened the note. Claude picked it up.
+
+"What is it?" said Charmian.
+
+"A box ticket for the Metropolitan. It must be for Sennier's first
+night, I suppose."
+
+"It is!" said Charmian, who had looked at the note.
+
+In a moment she gave it to Claude without comment.
+
+
+                                              RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL.
+                                                      _Feb. 28th_
+
+     "DEAR CHARMIAN,--Only a word to wish you and your genius a
+     gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even
+     Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this
+     occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all
+     coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our
+     best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have
+     a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble
+     friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers.
+     Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your
+     genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for
+     Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date,
+     has had to be postponed for four days--something wrong with the
+     scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a
+     triumph.
+
+     "Hopes and prayers for the genius.--Yours ever sincerely,
+
+                                             "ADELAIDE SHIFFNEY."
+
+     "Susan sends her love--not the universal brand."
+
+Claude read the note, and kept it for a moment in his hand. He was
+looking at it, but he knew Charmian's eyes were on him, he knew she was
+silently asking him to tell her all that had happened between Mrs.
+Shiffney and him. And he realized that her curiosity was the offspring
+of a jealousy which she probably wished to conceal, but which she
+suffered under even on such a day of anxiety and anticipation as this.
+
+"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box
+ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to
+hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours."
+
+"To yours!"
+
+"Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis.
+
+Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs.
+Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer
+softly. It clicked as it shut. She sighed. Something in the note they
+had just read made her feel apprehensive. It was almost as if it had
+given out a subtle exhalation which had affected her physically.
+
+"Claudie!" she said, turning round. "I would give almost anything to be
+like Susan to-day."
+
+"Would you? But why?"
+
+"She would be able to take it all calmly. She would be able to say to
+herself--'all this is passing, a moment in eternity, whichever way
+things go my soul will remain unaffected'--something like that. And it
+would really be so with Susan."
+
+"She certainly carries with her a great calmness."
+
+Charmian gazed at him.
+
+"You are wonderful to-day, too."
+
+Claude had kept up to this moment his dominating, almost bold air of a
+conqueror of circumstances, the armor which he had put on as a dress
+suitable to New York.
+
+"But in quite a different way," she added. "Susan never defies."
+
+Claude was startled by her shrewdness but avoided comment on it.
+
+"Madre must be thinking of us to-day," he said.
+
+"Yes. I thought--I almost expected she would send us a cablegram."
+
+"It may come yet. There's plenty of time."
+
+Charmian looked at the clock.
+
+"Only four hours before the curtain goes up."
+
+"Or we may find one for us at the theater."
+
+"Somehow I don't think Madre would send it there."
+
+She went to sit down on the sofa, putting cushions behind her with
+nervous hands, leaned back, leaned forward, moved the cushions, again
+leaned back.
+
+"I almost wish we'd asked Alston to come in to-day," she said.
+
+"But he's resting."
+
+"I know. But he would have come. He could have rested here with us."
+
+"Better for him to keep his voice perfectly quiet. To-night is his
+debut. He has got to pay back over three years to Crayford with his
+performance to-night. And we shall have him with us at supper."
+
+Charmian moved again, pushed the cushions away from her.
+
+"Yes, I've ordered it, a wonderful supper, all the things you and Alston
+like best."
+
+"We'll enjoy it."
+
+"Won't we? You sent Miss Mardon the flowers?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The telephone sounded.
+
+"It is Miss Mardon," Claude said, as he listened. "She's thanking me for
+the flowers."
+
+"Give her my love and best wishes for to-night."
+
+Claude obeyed, and added his own in a firm and cheerful voice.
+
+"She's resting, of course," said Charmian.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Everyone resting. It seems almost ghastly."
+
+"Why?" he said, laughing.
+
+"Oh, I don't know--death-like. I'm stupid to-day."
+
+She longed to say, "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by
+the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution at the last moment, show the
+white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been
+such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who have made this day
+possible!"
+
+"It's only the physical reaction," she added hastily. "After all we've
+gone through."
+
+"Oh, we mustn't give way to reaction yet. We've got the big thing in
+front of us. All the rest is nothing in comparison with to-night."
+
+"I know! I hope Madre will cable. If she doesn't, it will seem like a
+bad omen. I shall feel as if she didn't care what happens."
+
+He said nothing.
+
+"Won't you?" she asked.
+
+"I think she will cable. But even if she doesn't, I know she always
+cares very much what happens to you and me. Nothing would ever make me
+doubt that."
+
+"No, of course not. But I do want her to show it, to prove it to us
+to-day. It is such a day in our lives! Never, so long as we live, can we
+have such another day. It is the day I dreamed of, the day I foresaw,
+that night at Covent Garden."
+
+She felt a longing, which she checked, to add, "It is the day I decreed
+when I looked at Henriette Sennier!" But though she checked the longing,
+its birth had brought to her hope. She, a girl, had decreed this day and
+her decree had been obeyed. Her will had been exerted, and her will had
+triumphed. Nothing could break down that fact. Nothing could ever take
+from her the glory of that achievement. And it seemed to point to the
+ultimate glory for which she had been living so long, for which she had
+endured so patiently. Suddenly her restlessness increased, but it was no
+longer merely the restlessness of unquiet nerves. Anticipation whipped
+her to movement, and she sprang up abruptly from the sofa.
+
+"Claude, I can't stay in here! I can't rest. Don't ask me to. Anything
+else, but not that!"
+
+She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"Be a dear! Take me out!"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Anywhere! Fifth Avenue, Central Park! Let us walk! I know! Let us walk
+across the park and look at the theater, our theater. A walk will do me
+more good than you can dream of, genius though you are. And the time
+will pass quickly. I want it to fly. I want it to be night. I want to
+see the crowd. I want to hear it. How can we sit here in this hot red
+room waiting? Take me out!"
+
+Claude was glad to obey her. They wrapped themselves up, for it was a
+bitter day, and went down to the hall. As they passed the bureau the
+well-dressed, smooth-faced men behind the broad barrier looked at them
+with a certain interest and smiled. Charmian glanced round gaily and
+nodded to them.
+
+"I am sure they are all wishing us well!" she said to Claude. "I quite
+love Americans."
+
+"A taxi, sir?" asked a big man in uniform outside.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+They went to the left and turned into Fifth Avenue.
+
+How it roared that day! An endless river of motor-cars poured down it.
+Pedestrians thronged the pavements, hurrying by vivaciously, brimming
+with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there.
+For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great
+vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America.
+Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought:
+
+"What a world it is to conquer!"
+
+"Isn't it splendid out here!" she said. "What an almost maddening whirl
+of life. Faces, faces, faces, and brains and souls behind them. I love
+to see all these faces to-day. I feel the brains and the souls are
+wanting something that you are going to give them."
+
+"Let us hope one or two out of the multitude may be!"
+
+"One or two! Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself
+unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box
+is taken, every single one! Think of that--and all because of what you
+have done. Are we going to Central Park?"
+
+"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue."
+
+"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the
+edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city
+like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living
+creature had quicksilver in his veins--or her veins. For I never saw
+such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you
+conquer these wonderful women!"
+
+Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.
+
+"New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed.
+
+"How are you going to do without it?"
+
+"When we go?"
+
+"Yes, when we go home?"
+
+"Home? But where is our home?"
+
+"In Kensington Square, I suppose."
+
+"I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again.
+That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we
+really meant to do."
+
+"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"
+
+"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt
+there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."
+
+She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that
+just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.
+
+"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the
+ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"
+
+"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."
+
+They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed
+movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray
+squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in
+front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air
+of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if
+it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe,
+whatever others might think.
+
+"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.
+
+"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are
+going to be."
+
+"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."
+
+He quoted Dante:
+
+"_Quanto la cosa e piu perfetta, piu senta il bene, e cosi la
+doglienza._"
+
+"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she
+said. "Do you?"
+
+"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.
+
+And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.
+
+"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had
+walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close
+to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite
+side of the way."
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of
+their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it.
+Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of
+one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity
+they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly
+lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the
+motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the
+monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And
+out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a judge, or
+judges, prepared to join in the great decision by which was to be
+decided a fate. Both Claude and Charmian were thinking of this as they
+stood together, while the darkness gathered about them and the cold wind
+eddied by. And Charmian longed passionately to have the power to
+hypnotize all those brains into thinking Claude's work wonderful, all
+those hearts into loving it. For a moment the thought of the human
+being's independence almost appalled her.
+
+"It looks cold and almost dead now," she murmured. "How different it
+will look in a few hours!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the
+sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the
+passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even
+herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself,
+but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of
+human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude
+almost startled her.
+
+"What is it?" she said.
+
+She looked up at him quickly.
+
+"What's the matter, Claude?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come
+along."
+
+And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to
+walk quickly.
+
+He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the
+colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on
+the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the
+rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to
+gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick
+lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning
+to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the
+Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding
+galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded,
+alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors
+and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed
+women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical
+critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical
+season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the
+libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's
+prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.
+
+Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had
+impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.
+The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be
+trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won
+entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men
+instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood
+side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics
+and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only
+he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of
+his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known
+too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.
+America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out
+of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with
+it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift
+their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of
+the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries,
+the tinkling stream voices of the oases.
+
+Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew anticipation
+to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to
+America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.
+
+The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.
+
+Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his
+rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white
+flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to
+him and gently took him by the arm.
+
+"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"
+
+"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."
+
+"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on
+him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"
+
+And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed
+themselves on the critic's face.
+
+"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."
+
+"Bits of the opera?"
+
+"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me
+enormously--almost terrible music."
+
+"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord
+we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me
+get in front?"
+
+In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with
+Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next
+door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer
+and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many
+friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a
+gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid
+Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands
+he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the
+programme with almost greedy eyes.
+
+Mrs. Shiffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box
+to box. She took up her opera glasses.
+
+"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you
+see them?"
+
+Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.
+
+"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps
+they are too nervous to come."
+
+Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.
+
+"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great
+night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."
+
+Mrs. Shiffney leaned round to the next box.
+
+"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"
+
+"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just
+coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."
+
+"Where? Where?"
+
+"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale
+green."
+
+"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's
+wife?"
+
+He put up his glasses.
+
+"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. Shiffney.
+
+She drew back into her box.
+
+"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting
+behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."
+
+Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her
+across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this
+hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.
+
+Jacques Sennier began to chatter.
+
+At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.
+
+Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside
+hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before
+she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come
+a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best
+to-night love. Madre."
+
+Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she
+saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.
+
+"What's that?" she said.
+
+"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so
+I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied
+that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's
+roses."
+
+Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had
+turned out the electric burner.
+
+"It's strange to think of Madre in Berkeley Square to-night," said
+Charmian slowly. "I wonder what she is doing."
+
+"I am quite sure she is alone, up in her reading-room thinking of us, in
+one of her white dresses."
+
+"And wishing us--" she paused.
+
+The first notes of the Prelude sounded in the hidden orchestra.
+
+Claude fixed his mind on the thought of Madre, in a white dress, sitting
+alone in the well-known quiet room, thinking of him--in that moment he
+was an egoist--wishing him the best. He could almost see Madre's face
+rise up before him, as it must have looked when she wrote that
+cablegram, a face kind, intense, with fire, sorrow, and love in the
+burning eyes. And the thought of that face helped him very much just
+then, more than he would have thought it possible that anything could
+help him, was a firm and a tender friend to him in a difficult crisis of
+his life.
+
+He sat back in the shadow behind Charmian in a sort of strange
+loneliness, conscious of the enormous crowd around him. He could not see
+the members of this crowd. He saw only Charmian in her pale green gown,
+with a touch of green in her cloud of dark hair, and a long way off the
+stage. He heard perpetually his own music. But to-night it did not seem
+to him to be his own. He listened to it with a kind of dreadful and
+supreme detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him. But he listened
+with great intensity, with all his critical intelligence at work, and
+with--so at least it seemed to him--his heart prepared to be touched,
+moved. It was not a hard heart which was beating that night in the
+breast of Claude, nor was it the foolish, emotional heart of the
+partisan, lost to the touch of reason, to the influence of the deepest
+truth which a man of any genius dare not deny. No critic in the vast
+theater that night listened to Claude's opera more dispassionately than
+did Claude himself. Sometimes he thought of the colored woman in the
+huge pink hat. He knew she was somewhere in the theater, probably far up
+in that dim gallery toward which he had looked at rehearsal, when the
+building had presented itself to his imagination as a monster waiting
+heavily to be fed. On this one night at least he had fed it full. Was
+not _she_ stretching her great lips in a smile?
+
+Sometimes Claude heard faint movements, slight coughing, little sounds
+like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause.
+Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off
+his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with
+cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming!
+Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence of an
+attentive crowd fell again, like some vast veil falling, and Claude
+attended intensely to the music as if it were the music of another.
+
+After the first act there was more applause, which sounded in their box
+rather strong in patches but scattered. The singers were called three
+times, but always in this unconcentrated way.
+
+"It's going splendidly. They like it!" said Charmian quickly. "Three
+calls. That's unusual after a first act, when the audience hasn't warmed
+up. Isn't it odd, Claudie, that Americans always applaud quite
+differently from the way the English do? They always applaud like that."
+
+She had turned right round and was almost facing him.
+
+"How do you mean?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you notice? Persistently, but in clumps as it were. It is by
+their persistence they show how pleased they are, rather than by
+their--their--I hardly know just how to put it."
+
+"By their unanimity perhaps."
+
+"Oh, no! Not exactly that! Here's Mr. Crayford."
+
+Crayford slipped in, but only stayed for a moment.
+
+"Hear that applause?" he said. "They're mad about it. Alston's got them.
+I knew he would. That boy's going to be famous. But wait till the
+second act. They're in a fine humor, only asking to be pleased. I know
+the signs. The libretto's hit them hard. They're all asking what's to
+happen next."
+
+"You're satisfied then?" said Charmian.
+
+"Satisfied! I'm so happy I don't know what to do."
+
+He was gone.
+
+"He knows!" Charmian said.
+
+Her eyes were fixed upon Claude. They looked almost defiant.
+
+"If anyone in America knows what he is talking about I suppose it is Mr.
+Crayford," she added.
+
+There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American
+friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was
+going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"--all the
+proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on
+such occasions. One of them was an acquaintance of Van Brinen's. Claude
+asked him if Van Brinen were in the house. He said yes. Claude then
+inquired whether Van Brinen knew the number of his box, and was told
+that he did know it. The conversation turned to other topics, but when
+the two men had gone out Charmian said:
+
+"Why did you ask those questions about Mr. Van Brinen, Claudie?"
+
+"Only because I thought if he knew where our box was he might pay us a
+visit. No one has been more friendly with us than he has."
+
+"I see. He's certain to come after the next act. Ah! the lights are
+going down."
+
+She had been standing for a few minutes. Now she moved to sit down.
+Before doing so she drew her chair a little way back in the box.
+
+"I don't want to be distracted from the stage--my attention, I mean--by
+seeing too many people," she whispered, in explanation of her action.
+"You are quite right to keep at the back. One can listen much better if
+one doesn't see too much of the audience."
+
+Claude said nothing. The curtains were parting.
+
+The second act was listened to by the vast audience in a silence that
+was almost complete.
+
+Now and then Charmian whispered a word or two to Claude. Once she said:
+
+"Isn't it wonderful, the silence of a crowd? Doesn't it show how
+absorbed they are?"
+
+And again:
+
+"I think it's such a mercy that modern methods of composition give no
+opportunity to the audience to break in with applause. Any interruption
+would ruin the effect of the act as a whole."
+
+Claude just moved his head in reply.
+
+Everything was satisfactory. Jacob Crayford had been right. The opera
+was ready for production and was "going" without a hitch. The elaborate
+scenic effects were working perfectly. Miss Mardon had never been more
+admirable, more completely mistress of her art. Nor had she ever looked
+more wonderful. Alston Lake's success was assured. His voice filled the
+great house without difficulty. Even Charmian and Claude were surprised
+by its volume and beauty.
+
+"Isn't Alston splendid?" whispered Charmian once.
+
+"Yes," Claude replied.
+
+He added, after a pause:
+
+"Dear old Alston is safe."
+
+Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather
+restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it.
+Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again,
+opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience
+almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to
+frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did
+not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her
+as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed
+herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see
+the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her
+box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to
+be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the
+curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience on the
+stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost
+strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the
+act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often
+leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What
+were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the
+libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after
+the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure
+that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was
+sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her
+trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was
+saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices
+for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.
+
+The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had
+heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed
+by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement,
+when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her
+favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the
+opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging
+at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the
+rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.
+
+Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken
+it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This
+is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And
+presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:
+
+"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me.
+For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my
+thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me
+and I am the ocean."
+
+Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the
+audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her
+independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a
+nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness
+devised by Crayford. And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength,
+like an adversary braced up by conflict.
+
+Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She
+strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in
+such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!
+
+It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth.
+It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were
+three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and
+conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up
+from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.
+
+"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.
+
+"Can you? Where is he?"
+
+Claude got up slowly, picked up the roses and the cablegram from the
+chair beside Charmian, put them behind him, and took the chair, bringing
+it forward quite to the front of the box. As he did so Charmian made a
+sound like a word half-uttered and checked.
+
+"Where is he?" Claude repeated.
+
+Many people in the stalls were looking at him, were pointing him out. He
+seemed to ignore the attention fixed upon him.
+
+"There!" said Charmian, in a low voice.
+
+She pointed with her fan, then leaned back.
+
+Claude looked and saw Van Brinen not far off. He was standing up in the
+stalls, facing the boxes, bending a little and talking to two smartly
+dressed women. His pale face looked sad. Presently he stood up straight
+and seemed to look across the intervening heads into Claude's eyes.
+
+"He must see me!" Claude thought. "He does see me!"
+
+Van Brinen stood thus for quite a minute. Then he made his way to one of
+the exits and disappeared.
+
+"He is coming round to the box, I'm sure," said Charmian cheerfully. "He
+evidently saw us."
+
+"Yes."
+
+But Van Brinen did not come. Nor did Jacob Crayford. Several others
+came, however, and there were comments, congratulations. The same things
+were repeated by several mouths with strangely similar intonations. And
+Charmian made appropriate answers. And all the time she kept on saying
+to herself: "This is my hour of triumph, as Madame Sennier's was at
+Covent Garden. Only this is America and not England. So of course there
+is a difference. New York has its way of setting the seal on a triumph
+and London has its way."
+
+Moved presently to speak out of her mind she said to a Boston man,
+called Hostatter, who had looked in upon them:
+
+"It is so interesting, I think, to notice the difference between one
+nation and another in such a matter for instance as this receiving of a
+new work."
+
+"Very interesting, very interesting," said Hostatter.
+
+"You Americans show what you feel by the intensity of your si--by the
+intensity, the concentration with which you listen."
+
+"Exactly. And what is a London audience like? I have never been to a
+London premiere."
+
+"Oh, more--more boisterous and less intense. Isn't it so, Claude?"
+
+"No doubt there's a difference," said Claude.
+
+"Do you mean they are boisterous at Covent Garden?" said Hostatter,
+evidently surprised. "I always thought the Covent Garden audience was
+such a cold one."
+
+"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Charmian.
+
+She remembered the first night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. Suddenly a
+chill ran all through her, as if a stream of ice-cold water had trickled
+upon her.
+
+"Really!" said Hostatter. "And yet we Americans are said to have a bad
+reputation for noise."
+
+He had been smiling, but looked suddenly doubtful.
+
+"But as you say," he added, rather hastily, "in a theater we
+concentrate, especially when we are presented with something definitely
+artistic, as we are to-night."
+
+He shook hands.
+
+"Definitely artistic. My most sincere congratulations."
+
+He went out, and another man called Stephen Clinch, an ally of
+Crayford's immediately came in. After a few minutes of conversation he
+said:
+
+"Everybody is admiring the libretto. First-rate stuff, isn't it? I
+expected to find the author with you. Isn't he in the house?"
+
+"Yes, but he told us he would sit in the stalls," said Charmian.
+
+"Haven't you seen him?"
+
+"No," said Claude.
+
+"Well, of course you'll appear after the next act with him. There's sure
+to be a call. And I know Gillier will be called for as well as you."
+
+His rather cold gray eyes seemed to examine the two faces before him
+almost surreptitiously. Then he, too, went out of the box.
+
+"A call after this act!" said Charmian.
+
+"I believe they generally summon authors and composers after the
+penultimate act over here."
+
+"You'll take the call, of course, Claudie?"
+
+There was a silence. Then he said:
+
+"Yes, I shall take it."
+
+His voice was hard. Charmian scarcely recognized it.
+
+"Then you'll have to go behind the scenes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you--"
+
+"I'll wait till the curtain goes up, and then slip out."
+
+Again there was a silence. Charmian broke it at length by saying:
+
+"I think Monsieur Gillier might have come to see us to-night. It would
+have been natural if he had visited our box."
+
+"Perhaps he will come presently."
+
+A bell sounded. The third act was about to begin.
+
+Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous
+desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up
+softly from his seat.
+
+"I'll slip away now," he whispered.
+
+She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed
+to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word--she knew not the
+word it would be--of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her
+eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she
+moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchief to her
+eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run
+over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew
+what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within
+her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now
+she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.
+
+There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it
+was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed
+her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up
+and opened the door.
+
+"May I come in for a little while?" came a calm whisper from Susan
+Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white
+gloves over her hands and arms.
+
+"Oh, Susan--yes! I am all alone."
+
+"That is why I came."
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer
+and they saw your husband pass. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he
+was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute."
+
+She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.
+
+"Where were you sitting?" she whispered.
+
+"Here, at the back. Sit by me--oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers."
+
+She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and
+looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the
+floor.
+
+"What is it?" said Susan.
+
+"Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never
+mind. Claude must have taken it."
+
+The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man
+takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a "tight place."
+
+"Sit here!" she whispered to Susan.
+
+Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one
+of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak
+again till the third act was finished.
+
+It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate. Charmian
+had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal.
+She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that
+evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in
+a sort of fierce and active despair: "This is my idea of Hell." She felt
+that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act
+were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread
+an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a
+thing that had caused her agony.
+
+Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous
+act, and anticipating the end, when at last Claude would confront the
+world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.
+
+The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect
+smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on
+its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had
+devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said "wanted a
+lot of doing to." He had "made" the whole of it "over." Charmian
+remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at
+Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest
+at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land.
+She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea
+breaking sullenly against the long line of shore, the beads of sweat on
+the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes
+when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, "Tell me what
+you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
+
+This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely
+included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene,
+that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.
+
+Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away,
+though Susan--as she knew--would have made no effort to retain it. She
+was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to
+feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did
+give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she
+was able to feel, however vaguely, something of the universal,
+something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars,
+or hear the wind across vast spaces, or see a great deed done. As the
+act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call
+for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that
+went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this
+crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry
+the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first
+night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. There had been in it a marvellous sound
+which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made
+her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.
+
+If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at
+the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her
+fate with his.
+
+Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of,
+waited for, the sound.
+
+The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber.
+The scene which succeeded it was a triumph for Alston Lake. Whatever
+else this night might bring forth one thing was certain; Alston had
+"made good." He had "won out" and justified Crayford's belief in him.
+Even his father, reluctantly sitting in the stalls after a hard day in
+Wall Street, was obliged to be proud of his boy.
+
+"Dear old Alston!" Charmian found herself whispering. "He's a success.
+Alston's a success--a success!"
+
+She kept on forming the last word, and willing with all her might.
+
+"Success! Success--it is coming; it is ours! In a moment we shall know
+it, we shall have it! Success! Success!"
+
+With her soul and--it seemed to her--with her whole body, tense in the
+pretty green gown so carefully chosen for the great night, she willed,
+she called upon, she demanded success. And then she prayed for success.
+She shut her eyes, prayed hard, went on praying, marshalling all she and
+Claude had done before the Unseen Power, as reason for the blessing she
+entreated. And while she prayed, her hand ceased from twitching in Susan
+Fleet's.
+
+Long though the third act was, at last it drew near its end. And then
+Charmian began to be afraid, terribly afraid. She feared the decisive
+moment. She wished she were not in the theater. She thought of the
+asking eyes of the pressmen, expressing silently but definitely the
+great demand of this wonderful city, this wonderful country: "Be a
+success!" If that demand were not complied with! She recalled the
+notoriety she and Claude had had out here, the innumerable attentions
+which had been showered upon them, the interest which had been shown in
+them, the expectations aroused by Claude. She recalled the many
+allusions that had been made to herself in the papers, the interviews
+with the "clever wife" who had done so much for her husband, the columns
+about her expedition to Paris to get Gillier's libretto for Claude.
+Crayford had taken good care that the "little lady" should have her full
+share of the limelight. Now, through shut eyelids she saw it blaze like
+an enemy.
+
+If the opera should go down despite all that had been done how could she
+endure the situation that would be hers? But it would not go down. She
+remembered that she had once heard that fear of a thing attracts that
+thing to you. Was she who had been so full of will, so resolute, so
+persistent, so marvellously successful up to a point, going to be a
+craven now, going to show the white feather? When that evening began she
+had been sitting in the front of the box, in full view of the audience.
+Now she was sitting in the shadow, clasping a woman's hand. Claude had
+gone to the front of the box when she retreated. Now, in a very few
+minutes, he was going to face the great multitude. He was showing will,
+grit, to-night. And she felt, she knew, that, whatever the occasion,
+there was in Claude something strong enough to turn a bold front to it
+to-night, perhaps on any night or any day of the year. She must help
+him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She
+doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at
+such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow
+like a poltroon.
+
+She drew her hand away from Susan's, got up, and took her place alone in
+the front of the box, in sight of all the people in the stalls, in
+sight also of Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier. Susan remained where she
+was. She felt that Charmian needed to be alone just then. She liked her
+for the impulse which she had divined.
+
+At last the curtain fell.
+
+People applauded.
+
+"This is the American way," Charmian was saying to herself. "Not our
+way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of
+Covent Garden."
+
+Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening
+for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that
+stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.
+
+"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo,
+Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"
+
+The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself,
+and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of
+the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down
+into the soul of the audience.
+
+"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show
+it. I am going to hear the sound."
+
+With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that
+was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat
+violently.
+
+"The sound! The sound!"
+
+The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause
+continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English
+ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.
+
+"They are calling for Claude!"
+
+Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands
+forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.
+
+The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be
+dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite
+apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the
+bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite
+pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against
+terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a
+monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it
+was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.
+
+But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round,
+she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs
+of opera-glasses.
+
+Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.
+
+Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.
+
+"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.
+
+"Gillier! Author! Author!"
+
+The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed
+itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again
+the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her
+eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.
+
+Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through
+the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.
+
+Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at
+Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at
+the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she
+was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped
+back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared
+before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated,
+looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone
+on the stage.
+
+Then suddenly came from the audience the sound!
+
+It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent
+Garden on the night of the first performance of _Le Paradis Terrestre_.
+But essentially it was the same sound.
+
+Charmian heard it and her lips grew pale. But she sat well forward in
+the box, and, though she saw two opera-glasses levelled at her, she
+lifted her hands again and clapped till Armand Gillier passed out of
+sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid
+for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and
+white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the
+"little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by
+Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a
+very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather
+soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock,
+compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne
+was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about
+half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck
+of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was
+still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people
+for whom the preparations had been made came in.
+
+"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.
+
+She turned.
+
+"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white
+heather?"
+
+She had Alston's red roses in her hand.
+
+"I am going to put your roses in water now."
+
+She turned again to the waiter.
+
+"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper
+at once."
+
+"Certainly, ma'am!"
+
+"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied
+with it."
+
+She picked it up and handed it to Alston.
+
+"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."
+
+She went away, smiling.
+
+The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone
+together.
+
+Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.
+
+"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot
+of people round us, or--really to tell you, I mean, how fine your
+performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from
+to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve
+this great success."
+
+Alston wrung his friend's hand.
+
+"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs.
+Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have
+scored in it."
+
+"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."
+
+"I shall never enjoy singing any role so much as I have enjoyed singing
+your Spahi."
+
+"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any role better," said
+Claude.
+
+Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.
+
+"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper!
+Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly
+here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"
+
+For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.
+
+"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so
+splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I
+only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss
+Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he
+thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite
+finished?"
+
+"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely
+upon her lively chattering.
+
+Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of
+inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.
+
+"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost
+afraid--here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I
+think. Suppose we--"
+
+"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his
+glass.
+
+"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.
+
+"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only
+we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them.
+Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I
+recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was
+very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you
+take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came
+to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."
+
+"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"
+
+"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about
+Blue Points--"
+
+She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an
+opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed
+to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his
+exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her
+champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her
+eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of
+intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with
+a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him
+herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one
+when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the
+door of the lobby.
+
+Charmian moved uneasily.
+
+"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."
+
+She got up.
+
+"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.
+
+He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.
+
+"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+"What is it, Claude?"
+
+"A note or letter."
+
+"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"
+
+"Apparently."
+
+"Do read it. But have you finished?"
+
+"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."
+
+He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was
+burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and
+Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She
+gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a
+letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so
+Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows
+came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was
+with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to
+Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she
+heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which
+slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When
+he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat,
+and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but
+she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she
+could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table.
+Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.
+
+"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.
+
+"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."
+
+"Well, then--"
+
+She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.
+
+"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.
+
+"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"--his kind and honest eyes went
+from Charmian to Claude--"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the
+way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The
+fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take
+it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel
+like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both want a good long
+rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"
+
+He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar,
+lit it for him.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Charmian--" he said.
+
+He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather
+blunt features looked boyish and emotional.
+
+"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to
+the critics and the public."
+
+He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.
+
+"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."
+
+He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just
+repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.
+
+"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.
+
+Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door
+behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any
+words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She
+moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them
+down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which
+the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the
+water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long
+stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent
+sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing.
+When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do.
+And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it
+ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and
+Claude came in.
+
+"What a lot you had to say to each--" she began.
+
+She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.
+
+"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after
+a moment of silence.
+
+"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all
+till to-morrow. Do you mind?"
+
+"No."
+
+Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing
+expression which had stopped the words on her lips. Always Claude's
+face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by
+that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she
+had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt
+frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.
+
+"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I
+don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure
+I couldn't."
+
+"You were telling him again how splendidly--"
+
+"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper.
+I had to tell him something else--what I thought of my own."
+
+"What you--what you thought of your own!"
+
+"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless,
+soulless, hateful work."
+
+"Claude!" she faltered.
+
+"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have
+deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here
+at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"--his eyes pierced her--"do you
+dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when
+you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you
+dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"
+
+"How can you--oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack
+your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will,
+a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind.
+"It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't--"
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you
+didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I
+shall not believe you."
+
+She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her
+strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight
+against the malign power of the audience.
+
+"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"
+
+His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak,
+to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius,
+that everyone would recognize it as such soon, very soon, if not now,
+immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not
+speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his
+gaze.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity
+left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"
+
+He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand
+to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers--Madre's
+cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.
+
+"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.
+
+She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the
+other corner of the sofa beside him.
+
+"I want you to read that."
+
+He gave her the letter.
+
+"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.
+
+She took the letter and read.
+
+     "MY DEAR MR. HEATH,--I've left the opera-house and have
+     come to the office of my paper to write my article on your work
+     which I have just heard. But before I do so I feel moved to send
+     this letter to you. I don't know what you will think of it, or of
+     me for writing it, but I do care. I want you very much not to hate
+     it, not to think ill of me. People, I believe, very often speak and
+     think badly of us who call ourselves, are called, critics. They say
+     we are venial, that we are log-rollers, that we have no
+     convictions, that we don't know what we are talking about, that we
+     are the failures in art, all that kind of thing. We have plenty of
+     faults, no doubt. But there are some of us who try to be honest. I
+     try to be honest. I am going to try to be honest about your work
+     to-night. That is why I am sending you this.
+
+     "Your opera is not a success. I know New York. I dare even to say
+     that I know America. I have sat among American audiences too long
+     not to be able to 'taste' them. Their feeling gets right into me.
+     Your opera is not a success. But it isn't really that which
+     troubles me to-night. It is this. Your opera doesn't deserve to be
+     a success.
+
+     "That's the wound!
+
+     "I don't know, of course--I can't know--whether you are aware of
+     the wound. But I can't help thinking you must be. It is
+     presumption, I dare say, for a man like me, a mere critic, who
+     couldn't compose a bar of fine genuine music to save his life, to
+     try to dive into the soul of an artist, into your soul. But you are
+     a man who means a lot to me. If you didn't I shouldn't be writing
+     this letter. I believe you know what I know, what the audience knew
+     to-night, that the work you gave them is spurious, unworthy. It no
+     more represents you than the mud and the water that cover a lode of
+     gold represent what the miner is seeking for. I'm pretty sure you
+     must know.
+
+     "Perhaps you'll say: 'Then why have the impertinence to tell me?'
+
+     "It's because I've seen a little bit of the gold shining. The other
+     night, after I dined with you--you remember? Gold it was, that's
+     certain. We Americans know something about precious metal, or the
+     world belies us. After that night I was looking to write a great
+     article on you. And I'll do it yet. But I can't do it to-night.
+     That's my trouble. And it's a heavy one, heavier than I've had this
+     season. I've got to sit right down and say out the truth. I hate to
+     do it. And yet--do I altogether? I don't want to show up as
+     conceited, yet now, as I'm covering this bit of paper, I've begun
+     to think to myself: Shan't I, perhaps, while I'm doing my article,
+     be helping to clear away a little of the water and the mud that
+     cover the lode? Shan't I, perhaps, be getting the gold a bit nearer
+     to the light of the day, and the gaze of the world? Or, better
+     still, to the hand of the miner? Well, anyhow, I've got to go
+     ahead. I can't do anything else.
+
+     "But I remember the other night. And if I believe there's music
+     worth having in any man of our day I believe it's in you.--Your
+     very sincere friend, and your admirer,
+                                             "ALFRED VAN BRINEN."
+
+
+
+Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she
+bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When
+she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a
+long time. The letter had vanished from her sight. And how much else
+had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.
+
+At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You've finished the letter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I have it, then?"
+
+She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted
+her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She
+heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why?
+Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am
+tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as
+have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to
+remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of
+weakness."
+
+Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of
+growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.
+
+"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured
+me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous
+lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act
+Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the
+piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that
+the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.
+
+"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my
+complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience
+applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was
+necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made
+comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,
+before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true
+enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."
+
+He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and
+walked toward the farther wall of the room.
+
+"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing
+to you?"
+
+He had turned.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Crayford said nothing?"
+
+"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all
+made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"
+
+"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself.
+And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've
+all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And
+you--you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what
+I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself,
+and you least of all!"
+
+"Claude!"
+
+"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from
+the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to
+guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some
+talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success!
+You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you
+had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little
+unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little
+unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom
+nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his
+friends. You thought I was an eccentricity--"
+
+"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve
+which had broken in this reserved man.
+
+"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was
+meant to do, what I could do, drawing my inspiration not from the
+fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts,
+which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found
+their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other
+people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care
+what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And
+from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's
+the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till
+she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe--I believe in my
+soul it's the only chance for a man."
+
+He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:
+
+"The only chance for a man."
+
+He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.
+
+"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the
+world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface
+ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a
+host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that
+I fancied I might make something of since we married, _The Hound of
+Heaven_, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found
+me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and
+opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted
+yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in
+London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life
+of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all
+that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for
+me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to
+let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps
+you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do
+it. But I've got to build in freedom."
+
+His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes
+not of a man crushed but of a man released.
+
+She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.
+
+"In--freedom?" she almost whispered.
+
+She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the failure before
+the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt,
+had completely overwhelmed her.
+
+In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void
+opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till
+this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm
+ground.
+
+"In freedom!" she said again. "What--what do you mean?"
+
+He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look
+of surprise.
+
+"What do you mean?" she repeated.
+
+And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.
+
+"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never
+had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw
+you."
+
+She got slowly up from the sofa.
+
+"Is that--all you mean?" she said.
+
+"All! Isn't it enough?"
+
+"But is it all? I want to know--I must know!"
+
+The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look
+like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as
+if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly.
+The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her
+eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that
+went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer
+to her.
+
+"Is that all you meant by freedom?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She sighed and went forward against him.
+
+"Did you think--do you care?" he stammered.
+
+All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his
+arms around her.
+
+"Do you care for the man who has failed?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!"
+
+She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek,
+breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.
+
+At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed
+into his, and said:
+
+"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was--the man,
+not the triumph."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+"And you really mean to give up Kensington Square and the studio, and to
+take Djenan-el-Maqui for five years?" said Mrs. Mansfield to Charmian on
+a spring evening, as they sat together in the former's little library on
+the first floor of the house in Berkeley Square.
+
+"Yes, my only mother, if--there's always an 'if' in our poor lives,
+isn't there?"
+
+"If?" said her mother gently.
+
+"If you will occasionally brave the Gulf of Lyons and come to us in the
+winter. In the summer we shall generally come back to you."
+
+Mrs. Mansfield looked into the fire for a moment. Caroline lay before it
+in mild contentment, unchanged, unaffected by the results of America.
+Enough for her if a pleasant warmth from the burning logs played
+agreeably about her lemon-colored body, enough for her if the meal of
+dog biscuit soaked in milk was set before her at the appointed time. She
+sighed now, but not because she heard discussion of Djenan-el-Maqui. Her
+delicate noise was elicited by the point of her mistress's shoe, which
+at this moment pressed her side softly, moving her loose skin to and
+fro.
+
+"The Gulf of Lyons couldn't keep me from coming," Mrs. Mansfield said at
+last. "Yes, I daresay I shall see you in that Arab house, Charmian.
+Claude wishes to go there again?"
+
+"It is Claude who has decided the whole thing."
+
+Charmian's voice held a new sound. Mrs. Mansfield looked closely at her
+daughter.
+
+"You see, Madre, he and I--well, I think we have earned our retreat.
+We--we did stand up to the failure. We went to the first night of
+Jacques Sennier's new opera and helped, as everyone in an audience can
+help, to seal its triumph. I--I went round to Madame Sennier's box with
+Claude--Adelaide Shiffney and Armand Gillier were in it!--and
+congratulated her. Madre, we faced the music."
+
+Her voice quivered slightly. Mrs. Mansfield impulsively took her child's
+hands and held them.
+
+"We faced the music. Claude is strong. I never knew what he was before.
+Without that tremendous failure I never should have known him. He helped
+me. I didn't know one human being could help another as Claude helped me
+after the failure of the opera. Even Mr. Crayford admired him. He said
+to me the last day, when we were going to start for the ship: 'Well,
+little lady, you've married the biggest failure we've brought over here
+in my time, but you have married a man!' And I said--I said--"
+
+"Yes, my only child?"
+
+"'I believe that's all a woman wants.'"
+
+"Is it?"
+
+Mrs. Mansfield's dark, intense eyes searched Charmian's.
+
+"Is it all that _you_ want?"
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"Isn't the fear of the crowd still haunting you? Isn't uneasy ambition
+still tugging at you?"
+
+Charmian took her foot away from Caroline's side and sat very still for
+a moment.
+
+"I do want Claude to succeed, yes, I do, Madre. I believe every woman
+wants her man to succeed. But I shall never interfere again--never. I've
+had my lesson. I've seen the truth, both of myself and of Claude. But I
+shall always wish Claude to succeed, not in my way, but in his own. And
+I think he will. Yes, I believe he will. Weren't we--he and I--both
+extremists? I think perhaps we were. I may have been vulgar--oh, that
+word!--in my desire for fame, in my wish to get out of the crowd. But
+wasn't Claude just a little bit morbid in his fear of life, in his
+shrinking from publicity? I think, perhaps, he was. And I know now he
+thinks so. Claude is changed, Madre. All he went through in New York has
+changed him. He's a much bigger man than he was when we left England.
+You must see that!"
+
+"I do see it."
+
+"From now onward he'll do the work he is fitted to do, only that. But I
+think he means to let people hear it. He said to me only last night:
+'Now they all know the false man, I have the wish to show them the man
+who is real.'"
+
+"The man who had the crucifix standing before his piano," said Mrs.
+Mansfield, in a low voice. "The man who heard a great voice out of the
+temple speaking to the seven angels."
+
+She paused.
+
+"Did he ever play you that?" she asked Charmian.
+
+"One night in America, when our dear friend, Alfred Van Brinen, was with
+us. But he played it for Mr. Van Brinen."
+
+"And--since then?"
+
+"Madre, he has played it since then for me."
+
+Charmian got up from her chair. She stood by the fire. Her thin body
+showed in clear outline against the flames, but her face was a little in
+shadow.
+
+"Madretta," she began, and was silent.
+
+"Yes?" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+"Susan Fleet and I were once talking about theosophy. And Susan said a
+thing I have never forgotten."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"She said: 'It's a long journey up the Ray.' I didn't understand. And
+she explained that by the Ray she meant the bridge that leads from the
+personal which perishes to the immortal which endures. Madre, I shall
+always be very personal, I think. I can't help it. I don't know that I
+even want to help it. But--but I do believe that in America, that night
+after the opera, I took a long, long step on the journey up the Ray. I
+must have, I think, because that night I was happy."
+
+Her eyes became almost mysterious in the firelight. She looked down and
+added, in a withdrawn voice:
+
+"_I_ was happy in failure!"
+
+"No, in success!" said Mrs. Mansfield.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of Ambition, by Robert Hichens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF AMBITION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19491.txt or 19491.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/4/9/19491/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/19491.zip b/19491.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c407657
--- /dev/null
+++ b/19491.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa14dee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #19491 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19491)