A fortnight later The Wanderer lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers. But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney, Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at the HÔtel St. George at Mustapha SupÉrieur.

Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough, and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently, volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.

Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little. And she had the great advantage in life—so, at least, she considered it—of being a theosophist.

Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again Petite Fille de Tombouctou she had felt she must get out of Europe, if only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in England in two or three weeks. So The Wanderer had gone round to Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her there.

Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat. All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were, trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead, and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven—she had really been married at sixteen—was living as companion at Folkestone with an old lady of eighty-two.

Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree," and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions" which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about, had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted," and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she had to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the meaning of the word shyness.

When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation—alone above Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.

"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.

Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything this afternoon?" she answered:

"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't bother about me."

"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and business-like manner.

Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But she did not.

On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old buffers talking about politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on, descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was conscious of a feeling of greater ease.

"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm trees by a little table.

"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.

They sat down.

"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.

"I shall."

"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."

"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."

"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"

"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought so she found we must go away."

Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to tumble out.

"Isn't it—" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.

"Yes?"

"I don't know what I was going to say."

"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss Fleet, composedly.

"Something of that sort perhaps."

"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."

"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity oneself?"

"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.

She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam of the sun on it.

"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many things?"

"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be fifty almost directly."

"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.

"No, it isn't."

"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.

"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."

Charmian put her chin in her hand.

"How did you know what I thought?"

"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that kind."

"Yes, I suppose so."

Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her chin.

"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!" she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.

"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a vieille fille who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man who didn't want to marry her."

Miss Fleet was smiling.

"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."

"How calm you are!"

"Why not?"

"I could never be like that."

"Perhaps when you are fifty."

"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of caution very rare in her.

"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."

Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed in a religion—the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet—yes, certainly—she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To "go on" at all, ever—how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.

An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden. The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where The Wanderer lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going to be here again?"

"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her chair.

"I did once."

"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or two?"

"I can't say I do."

"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."

"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.

"I—I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said Charmian.

"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."

One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary! And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan Fleet?

"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm lucky."

"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.

"Yes?"

"To be as you are."

After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the following afternoon.

"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are several that are beautiful."

Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion. Algiers affected her somewhat as the Petite Fille de Tombouctou had affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I am nothing to him!"

Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected. She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!" besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim, squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, to make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness. Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be elsewhere.

At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated. "She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!" thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she spoke.

They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of the hill over which the houses of Mustapha SupÉrieur are scattered. Here no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world that was so near.

Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island, just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm, and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm—they were the island, round which slept greenish-yellow water guarded by the azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses, making a half-moon.

Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was. It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people, to suggest to them—what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One longed to sail away, to land on it—and then?

Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet immediately.

On the shore of the lake there was a seat.

"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm very unhappy."

She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.

"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought, connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some strange way that seemed inevitable.

Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat tailor-made lap.

"I'm sorry for that," she said.

"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes it so much worse. I didn't know—till I came here. At least, I didn't really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I wasn't so dreadfully wretched."

A sort of wave of desperation—it seemed a hot wave—surged through Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.

"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."

"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.

"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."

"I suppose you mean a man."

Charmian blushed.

"That sounds—oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care for—perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will never let me."

"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply because it seems to me that one class never really understands another, not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."

"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the yacht."

"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.

Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of her companion's voice.

"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.

"No."

"Have you seen him?"

"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then that he wasn't coming."

"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"

"Is he a great friend of yours?"

"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you think of me?"

Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.

"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost thought I hated him."

"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.

"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet—or may I call you Susan to-day?"

"Of course, and to-morrow, too."

"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality? Do you think I—am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all the other girls—you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"

There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched Susan Fleet.

"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."

"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."

"Perhaps he likes you."

"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we know a thing by instinct—don't we?"

"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within us."

"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous, who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius, I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know, nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and pined to be extraordinary!"

"Extraordinary? In what way?"

"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately—quite lately—I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"

"I'm not laughing."

"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't. And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man manquÉ because of a sort of kink in his temperament. And—I know that I could get rid of that kink if—"

She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed, almost fiercely.

"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."

"When I look at that island—"

Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said, in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:

"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go to rust."

Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.

"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day, when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of things—here."

"Tell me what it is."

"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha Ali, walking toward the hotel—when he was just under that arch of pink roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt—I shall be here again with him."

She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.

"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they knew, and told me."

Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.

"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn through that man, and to teach him."

"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"

Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with possibility.

"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."

"Learn! Why, I've just told you—"

"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."

Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman had astonished her.

"Do you?" she almost blurted out.

"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."

"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone else."