can tell you that."

"He realizes it."

"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."

"I won't tell a soul."

"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude
against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for
the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's
going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is
expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"--Charmian
thrilled at that word--"just about the same time, a day or two before,
or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or
the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been
seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what
opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to
run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night
stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till
every note in his score's in its place."

"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."

"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from
what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the
writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a
scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed
everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,'
I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have
to bring him over."

"Of course! Of course!"

"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like
old bones."

He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a
grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:

"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it
if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."

He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:

"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it,
though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's
a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish
of it."

"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.

From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must
be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.

CHAPTER XXIX

On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just