om it came.

The impression she received, on coming back to this world after a long
absence, was of a shifting quicksand. She also now knew absolutely how
much of a nobody she was in it.

She had returned to Africa caring for it much less, but longing much
more to conquer it and to dominate it.

On that day in October, a gorgeous day which had surely lain long in the
heart of summer, when she saw again the climbing white town on the hill,
when later she stood again in the Arab court, hearing the French voices
of the servants, the guttural chatter of Bibi and Fatma, seeing the
three gold fish making their eternal pilgrimage through the water shed
by the fountain into the marble basin, she felt an intimate thrill at
her heart. There was something here that she loved as she loved nothing
in London.

From the night when Claude and Armand Gillier had returned to Mustapha
after the visit to Constantine "the opera" had been to Charmian almost
as a living thing--a thing for which she had fought, from which she had
beaten off enemies. She thought of it as their child, Claude's and hers.
They had no other child. She did not regret that.

Claude had long ago learnt to work in his home without difficulty. The
paralysis which had beset him in Kensington had not returned. He was
inclined to believe that by constant effort he had strengthened his
will. But he had also become thoroughly accustomed to married life. And
the fact that Charmian had become accustomed to it, too, had helped him
without his being conscious of it. The embarrassment of beginnings was
gone. And something else was gone; the sense of secret combat which in
the first months of their marriage had made life so difficult to both of
them.

The man had given in to the woman. When Claude left England with
Gillier's bought libretto he was a conquered man. And this fact had
brought about a cessation of struggle and had created a sensation of
calm even in the conquered.

Every day now, when Claude went up to his room on the roof to work at
the opera, he was doing exactly what his wife wished him to do. By
degrees he had come to believe that he was also doing what he wished to
do.

He was no longer reserved about his work with Charmian. The barriers
were broken down. The wife knew what the husband was doing. They "talked
things over."

Twice during their long sojourn at Mustapha they had been visited by
Alston Lake. And now, in the first days of April, came a not