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."