eems 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. Ch