"Not our
way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of
Covent Garden."

Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening
for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that
stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.

"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo,
Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"

The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself,
and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of
the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down
into the soul of the audience.

"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show
it. I am going to hear the sound."

With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that
was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat
violently.

"The sound! The sound!"

The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause
continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English
ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.

"They are calling for Claude!"

Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands
forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.

The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be
dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite
apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the
bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite
pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against
terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a
monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it
was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.

But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round,
she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs
of opera-glasses.

Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.

Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.

"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.

"Gillier! Author! Author!"

The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed
itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again
the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her
eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still ve