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.



"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.



"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?"