s, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand
Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath,
Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph
Crayford's opinion of Mrs. Charmian Heath, how a clever woman can help
her husband--was there really anything of importance in this world
except Charmian and Claude Heath's energy, enterprise, and ultimate
success?

From the hotel she went to the Opera House. And there she was in the
midst of a world apart, which seemed to her the whole of the world.
Everybody whom she met there was concentrated on the opera. She talked
to orchestral players about the musical effects; to the conductor about
detail, color, ensemble; to scene-painters about the various "sets,"
their arrangement, lighting, the gauzes used in them, the properties,
the back cloths; to machinists about the locusts and other sensations;
to the singers about their roles; to dancers about their strange Eastern
poses; to Fakirs about their serpents and their miracles. She lived in
the opera, as the opera lived in the vast theater. She was, as it were,
enclosed in a shell within a shell. New York was the great sea murmuring
outside. And always it was murmuring of the opera. In consequence of
Jacob Crayford's great opinion of Charmian she was the spoilt child in
his theater. Her situation there was delightful. Everybody took his cue
from Crayford. And Crayford's verdict on Charmian was, "She's a
wonderful little lady. I know her, and I say she's a peach. Heath did
the cleverest thing he ever did in his life when he married her."

Charmian really had influence with Crayford, and she used it, revelling
in a sense of her power and importance. He consulted her about many
points in the performance. And she spoke her mind with decision, growing
day by day in self-reliance. In the theater she was generally
surrounded, and she grew to love it as she had never loved any place
before. The romance and beauty of Djenan-el-Maqui were as nothing in
comparison with the fascination of the Monster with the Maw, vast, dark,
and patient, waiting for its evening provender. To Charmian it seemed
like a great personality. Often she found herself thinking of it as
sentient, brooding over the opera, secretly attentive to all that was
going on in connection with it. She loved its darkness, the ghostly
lightness of the covers spread over it, the ranges of its gaping boxes,
the far-off mystery of i