who wrote the libretto?"

Again Charmian hesitated, and again overcame her hesitation.

"It is by a Frenchman, or rather an Algerian, French but born here. His
name is Gillier."

"Armand Gillier?" exclaimed Madame Sennier, while her husband threw out
his hands in a gesture of surprise.

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Know him!" exclaimed the composer. "When have I not known him? Three
libretti by him have I rejected--three, madame. He challenged me to a
duel, pistols, if you please! I to fire, and perhaps be shot, because he
cannot write a good libretto! Which has your poor unfortunate husband
accepted?"

Charmian handed the tea. She felt Madame Sennier's hard and observant
eyes--they were yellow eyes, and small--fixed upon her.

"Claude's libretto has never been offered to anyone else," she answered.

Madame Sennier slightly shrugged her shoulders.

"And so Gillier is with your husband!" she observed. Apparently she was
clairvoyante. "Well, madame, you are a brave woman. That is all I can
say!"

"Brave! But why?"

Mrs. Shiffney's eyes looked full of laughter.

"Why, Henriette?" she asked, leaning forward. "Do tell us."

"Gillier makes other people like he is," said Madame Sennier. "But what
does it matter? Each one for himself! Don't you say that in England?"

She had turned to Max Elliot.

"That applies specially to women," she continued, with her curiously
ruthless and too self-possessed air. "Each woman for herself, and the
Devil will carefully take the hindmost. Why should he not?"

She shot another glance at Charmian, a glance penetrating and cold as a
dagger. Charmian felt that she hated this woman. And yet she admired her
immensely, too. Madame Sennier would never be taken by the Devil because
she was the hindmost. That was certain.

Max Elliot began to talk to Sennier and Mrs. Shiffney. Susan Fleet went
over to sit with them. And Charmian had an opportunity for conversation
with Madame Sennier.

She secretly shrank from her, yet she longed to be more intimate with
her, to learn something from her. She felt that the Frenchwoman was
completely unscrupulous. She saw cruelty in those yellow eyes. The red
mouth was hard as a bar of iron in the artificial white face. Madame
Sennier moved in a sea of perfume. And even this perfume troubled and
disgusted, yet half fascinated Charmian, suggesting to her knowledge
that she did not possess, and that perhaps helped on the way of
ambition. She felt like an