en her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did
not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her
as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed
herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see
the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her
box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to
be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the
curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience on the
stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost
strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the
act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often
leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What
were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the
libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after
the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure
that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was
sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her
trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was
saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices
for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.

The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had
heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed
by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement,
when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her
favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the
opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging
at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the
rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.

Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken
it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This
is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And
presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:

"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me.
For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my
thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me
and I am the ocean."

Charmian