down into the dust of despair.

Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that
was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth,
looked at Charmian, and said:

"Yah!"

Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word.
But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back,
beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.

"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going
to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the
only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and
bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever
trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get
down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or
not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it.
I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your
getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and
your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you
write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then.
You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the
best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start,
but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you
to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though
you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the
center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of
feet above it."

"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.

"Ah!" breathed Charmian.

Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he
twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably
thought Napoleonic.

"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and
my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"--his tone was
changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost
paternal--"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big
success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger--eh, little
lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"

"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.

His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of
the room, out of the villa