which some day would fill her life and Claude's
with excitement, with glory, with the fever of fame. For the first time
she really understood something of the renunciation which must make up
so large a part of every true artist's life. Sometimes she wondered what
Madame Sennier's life had been while Jacques Sennier was composing _Le
Paradis Terrestre_, how long he had taken in the creation of that
stupendous success. Then resolutely she turned to her little manuals.

She had begun with _The Seven Principles of Man_. The short preface had
attracted her. "Life easier to bear--death easier to face." If theosophy
helped men and women to the finding of that its value was surely
inestimable. Charmian was not obsessed by any dark thoughts of death.
But she considered that she knew quite well the weight of time's burden
in life. She needed help to make the waiting easier. For sometimes, when
she was sitting alone, the prospect seemed almost intolerable. The
crowded Opera House, the lights, the thunder of applause, the fixed
attention of the world--they were all so far away.

Resolutely she read _The Seven Principles of Man_.

Then she dipped into _Reincarnation_ and _Death--and After?_

Although she did not at all fully understand much of what she read, she
received from these three books two dominant impressions. One was of
illimitable vastness, the other of an almost horrifying smallness. She
read, re-read, and, for the moment, that is when she was shut in alone
with the books, her life with Claude presented itself to her like a mote
in space. Of what use was it to concentrate, to strive, to plan, to
renounce, to build as if for eternity, if the soul were merely a rapid
traveller, passing hurriedly on from body to body, as a feverish and
unsatisfied being, homeless and alone, passes from hotel to hotel? Were
she and Claude only joined together for a moment? She tried to realize
thoroughly the theosophical attitude of mind, to force herself to regard
her existence with Claude from the theosophical standpoint--as, say,
Mrs. Besant might, probably must, regard her life with anyone. She
certainly did not succeed in this effort. But she attained to a sort of
nightmare conception of the futility of passing relations with other
hurrying lives. And she tried to imagine herself alone without Claude in
her life.

Instantly her mind began to concern itself with Claude's talent, and she
began to imagine herself without her present a