t 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