l. 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Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to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 Lad