,
when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were
centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which
only comes on a night of nights?

The libretto was touched upon. Alston surely begged her to read it. Or
did she offer to do so, induced and deliciously betrayed into the
definite by Alston? She and he were supposed to be playing into each
other's hands. But, in that matter of the libretto, Charmian never was
able to believe that they did so. The whole thing seemed somehow to
"come about of itself."

Sitting with her feet on a stool, which she very soon got rid of,
Charmian began to read, while Crayford luxuriously struck a match and
applied to it another cigar. At that moment he was enjoying himself, as
only an incessantly and almost feverishly active man is able to in a
rare interval of perfect repose, when life and nature say to him "Rest!
We have prepared this dim hour of stars, scents, silence, warmth, wonder
for you!" He was glad not to talk, glad to hear the sound of a woman's
agreeable voice.

Just at first, as Charmian read, his attention was inclined to wander.
The night was so vast, so starry and still, that--as he afterward said
to himself--"it took every bit of ginger out of me." But Charmian had
not studied with Madame Thenant for nothing. This was an almost supreme
moment in her life, and she knew it. She might never have another
opportunity of influencing fate so strongly on Claude's behalf. Madame
Sennier's white face, set in the frame of an opera-box, rose up before
her. She took her feet off the stool--she was no odalisque to be
pampered with footstools and cushions--and she let herself go.

Very late in the night Crayford's voice said:

"That's the best libretto since _Carmen_, and I know something about
libretti."

Charmian had her reward. He added, after a minute:

"Your reading, Mrs. Heath, was bully, simply bully!"

Charmian was silent. Her eyes were full of tears. At that moment she was
incapable of speech. Alston Lake cleared his throat.

"Say," began Crayford, after a prolonged pause, during which he seemed
to be thinking profoundly, pulling incessantly at his beard, and
yielding to a strong attack of the tic which sometimes afflicted
him--"say, can't you get that husband of yours to come right back from
wherever he is?"

With an effort, Charmian regained self-control.

"Oh, yes, I could, of course. But--but I think he needs the holiday he
is ta