and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
would go badly.

"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
only people--"

Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and
caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
defensive.

"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
least."

"Possibly, madame!" he replied.

He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
megalomania.

Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.

The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
felt both dull and excited.

"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."

Mrs. Haynes