not. I must go. I must really. I know I need any amount
of sleep to make up arrears."

"You don't look sleepy."

"How could I, in New York?"

"We don't need to sleep here. Sit down again. Eve Inness is quite
definitely given up."

"But--"

Mrs. Shiffney looked at him, and he sat down. At that moment he
remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had
looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now
he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he
felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look
he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have
won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt it. She feels
it now more than ever." And abruptly he said:

"You are on Sennier's side. And really it is a sort of battle here. The
two managements have turned it into a battle. We've been talking all
this evening of music. Do you really wish me to succeed? I think--" he
paused. He was on the edge of accusing her of treachery at Constantine.
But he decided not to do so, and continued, "What I mean is, do you
genuinely care whether I succeed or not?"

After a minute Mrs. Shiffney said:

"Perhaps I care even more than Charmian does."

Her large and intelligent eyes were still fixed upon Claude. She looked
absolutely self-possessed, yet as if she were feeling something
strongly, and meant him to be aware of that. And she believed that just
then it depended upon Claude whether she cared for his success or
desired his failure. His long resistance to her influence, followed by
this partial yielding to it, had begun to irritate her capricious nature
intensely. And this irritation, if prolonged, might give birth in her
either to a really violent passion, of the burning straw species, for
Claude, or to an active hatred of him. At this moment she knew this.

"Perhaps I care too much!" she said.

And instantly, as at Constantine, when the reality of her nature
deliberately made itself apparent, with intention calling to him, Claude
felt the invincible recoil within him, the backward movement of his true
self. The spurious vanity of the male died within him. The feverish
pleasure in proving his power died. And all that was left for the moment
was the dominant sense of honor, of what he owed to Charmian. Mrs.
Shiffney would have called this "the shriek of the Puritan." It was
certainly the cry of the real m