o go to Algeria." He still wanted
operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in
London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he?
Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude
wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after
Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband.
Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually
returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of
it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had
shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected,
had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he
saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the
giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had
evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away
and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had
inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera."
Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe
anyway, where folk could get at him if they wanted to?" had been the
next question. Lake's answer had rather indicated that the composer was
very glad to have a good stretch of ocean between himself and any "folk"
who might want to get at him.

This was the point at which the Lake correspondence with Charmian stood
in the first week of August. His last letter lay on her knee one
afternoon, as she sat in a hidden nook at the bottom of the garden, with
delicate bamboos rustling in a warm south wind about her.

Claude knew nothing of this exchange of letters, of all the planning and
plotting. It was all for him. Some day, when the result was success, he
should be told everything, unless by that time it was too late, and the
steps to success were all forgotten. Charmian did nothing to disturb
him. She wished him to be obsessed by the work, to do it now merely for
its own sake. The result of his labors would probably be better if that
were so. If Crayford did come--and he must come! Charmian was willing it
every day--his coming would be a surprise to Claude, and would seem to
be a surprise to Charmian. She would get rid of Claude for a few days
when Lake forewarned her that their arrival was imminent; would persuade
him to take a little holiday, to go, perhaps, up into the cork woods to
Hammam