"So the darned rester's come back, has he?"

Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel.

"They gave you the note, then?" said Alston.

"Yaw."

Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge Havana.

"I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up. "Of course she telegraphed him to come."

"I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically.

"Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily.

He sat down and crossed his legs.

"No. But even you can't see what isn't."

"There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well, that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent little thing, that's all."

Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable expression.

"She's brought the rester back so as not to miss the opportunity of his life. Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going right up to Djen-anne. I'm going to take the rester by myself, and I'm just going to hear that darned opera; and neither the little lady nor you's going to get a look in. This is up to me, and you'll just keep right out of it. See?"

He turned the cigar in his mouth, and his tic suddenly became very apparent.

"And what am I to do?" asked Alston.

"When I get to Djen-anne, I'll open out at once, come right to business. You stop here. As likely as not the little lady'll come back in the car to take you for a spin. If she does, keep her out till late. You can tell her a good bit depends on it."

"Very well."

"Happen she'll dine with you?" threw out Crayford, always with the same half-humorous dryness.

"Do you mean that you wish me to try and keep Mrs. Heath to dinner?" said Alston, with bland formality.

"She might cheer you up. You might cheer each other up."

At this point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to distort slightly one corner of his mouth.

Charmian did come down from Mustapha in Crayford's big yellow car. She was in a state of great excitement.

"O Alston!" she exclaimed, "where are we going? What a man he is when it comes to business! He simply packed me off. I have never been treated in such a way before. We've got hours and hours to fill up somehow. I feel almost as if I were waiting to be told on what day I am to be guillotined, like a French criminal. How will Claude get on with him? Just think of those two shut in together!"

As Alston got into the car she repeated:

"Where are we going?"

"Allez au Diable!" said Alston to Crayford's chauffeur, who was a Frenchman.

"Bien, m'sieu!"

"And—" Alston pulled out his watch. "You must take at least seven hours to get there."

"TrÈs bien, m'sieu."

"That's a cute fellow," said Alston to Charmian, as they drove off. "Knows how to time things!"

It was evening when they returned to the hotel, dusty and tired.

"You'll dine with me, Mrs. Charmian!" said Alston.

"Oh, no; I must go home now. I can't wait any longer."

"Better dine with me."

She took off her big motor veil, and looked at him.

"Did Mr. Crayford say I was to dine with you?"

"No. But he evidently thought it would be a suitable arrangement."

"But what will people think?"

"What they always do, I suppose."

"Yes, but what's that?"

"I've wondered for years!"

He held out his big hand. Charmian yielded and got out of the car.

At ten o'clock Crayford had not reappeared, and she insisted on returning home.

"I can't stay out all night even for an impresario," she said.

Alston agreed, and they went out to the front door to get a carriage.

"Of course I'll see you home, Mrs. Charmian."

"Yes, you may."

As they drove off she exclaimed:

"That man really is a terror, Alston, or should I say a holy terror? Do you know, I feel almost guilty in daring to venture back to my own house."

"Maybe we'll meet him on the way up."

"If we do be sure you stop the carriage."

"But if he doesn't stop his?"

"Then I'll stop it. Keep a sharp look-out. I'm tired, but oh! I do feel so excited. You look out all the time on your side, and I'll do the same on mine."

"Well, but we meet everything on the—"

"Never mind! Oh, don't be practical at such a moment! He might pass us on any side."

Alston laughed and obeyed her mandate.

They were a long way up the hill, and were near to the church of the Holy Trinity when Charmian cried out:

"There's a carriage coming. I believe he's in it."

"Why?"

"Because I do! Be ready to stop him."

"Gee! He is in it! Hi! Mr. Crayford! Crayford!"

Charmian, leaning quickly forward, gave their astonished coachman a violent push in the small of his back.

"Stop! Stop!"

He pulled up the horses with a jerk.

"Hello!" said Crayford.

He took off his hat.

"Goin' home to roost?" he added to Charmian.

"If you have no objection," she answered, with a pretense of dignity.

They looked at one another in the soft darkness which was illumined by the lamps of the two carriages. Crayford, as usual, was smoking a big cigar.

"Have you dined?" said Alston.

"Not yet."

"Have you—" Charmian began, and paused. "Have you been hearing the opera all this time?"

"Yaw."

He blew out a smoke ring.

"Hearing it and talking things over."

Her heart leaped with hope and with expectation.

"Then you—then I suppose—"

"See here, little lady," said Crayford. "I'm not feeling quite as full as I should like. I think I'll be getting home along. Your husband will tell you things, I've no doubt. Want Lake to see you in, do you?"

"No. I'm almost there."

"Then what do you say to his coming back with me?"

"Of course. Good-night, Mr. Lake. No, no! I don't want you really! All the coachmen know me here, and I them. I've driven alone dozens of times. Good-night. Good-night, Mr. Crayford."

She almost pushed Alston out of the carriage in her excitement. She was now burning with impatience to be with Claude.

"Good-night, good-night!" she called, waving her hands as the horses moved forward.

"She's a oner," said Crayford. "And so are you to keep a woman like that quiet all these hours. My boy, I'm empty, I can tell you."

He said not a word to Alston about the opera that night, and Alston did not attempt to make him talk.

When Charmian arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at the cold chicken he was eating.

"O Claude!" she said, as he looked round. "Such a day! Well?"

She came to the table, pushed Caroline ruthlessly to the floor, took the dog's chair, and repeated, "Well?"

Claude's face was flushed, his short hair was untidy, and the eyes which he fixed upon her looked excited, tired, and, she thought, something else.

"Is anything the matter?"

"No, why should there be? Where have you been?"

"With Alston. He insisted on my keeping out of the way. Crayford I mean, of course. Has it gone well? Did you play the whole of it; all you've composed, I mean?"

"Yes."

"What did he say? What did he think of it?"

"It isn't easy to know exactly what that kind of man thinks."

"Was he disagreeable? Didn't you get on?"

"Oh, I suppose we did."

"What did he say, then?"

"All sorts of things."

"Go on eating. You look dreadfully tired. Tell me some of the things."

"Well, he liked some of it."

"Only some?"

"He seemed to like a good deal. But he suggested quantities of alterations."

"Where? Which part?"

"I should have to show you."

"Drink some wine. I'm sure you need it. Give me some idea. You can easily do that without showing me to-night."

"He says a march should be introduced. You know, in that scene—"

"I know, the soldiers, the Foreign Legion. Well, that would be easy enough. You could do that in a day."

"Do you think one has only to sit down?"

"Two days, then; a week if you like! You have wonderful facility when you choose. And what else? Here, I'll pour out the wine. What else?"

"Heaps of things. He wants to pull half the opera to pieces, I think."

"Oh, no, Claudie! You are exaggerating. You always do, dear old boy. And if you do what he says, what then?"

"How d'you mean?"

"Would he take it? Would he produce it?"

"He didn't commit himself."

"Of course not! They never do. But would he? You must have gathered something from his manner, from what he said, what he looked like."

"He seemed very much struck with the libretto. He said there were great opportunities for new scenic effects."

"He is going to take it! He is! He is!" she cried exultantly. "I knew he would. I always knew. Why, why do you look so grim, Claudie?"

She threw one arm round his neck and kissed him.

"Don't look like that when we are on the eve of everything we've been working for, waiting—longing for, for months and years! Caroline! Caroline!"

Caroline hastily indicated her presence.

"Come up! The darling, she shall have a piece of cake, two pieces! There! And the sugary part, too!"

"You'll make her ill."

"Never mind. If she is ill it is in a good cause. Claudie, just think, you are going to be another Jacques Sennier! It's too wonderful. And yet I knew it. Didn't I tell you that night in the opera house? I said it would be so. Didn't I? Can you deny it?"

"I don't deny it. But—"

"You are made of buts. If it were not for me you would go and hide away your genius, and no one would ever know you existed at all. It's pathetic. But you've married a wife who knows what you are, and others shall know too. The whole world shall know."

He could not help laughing at her wild enthusiasm. But he said, with a sobriety that almost made her despair:

"You are going too fast, Charmian. I'm not at all sure that I shall be able to consent to make changes in the opera."

Then began a curious conflict which lasted for days between Claude Heath on the one side, and Charmian, Alston Lake, and Crayford on the other. It was really a tragic conflict, for it was, Claude believed, the last stand made by an artist in defense of his art. Never had he felt so much alone as during these days of conflict. Yet he was in his own home, with a wife who was working for him, a devoted friend who was longing for his success, and a man who was seriously thinking of bringing him and his work into the notice of the vast world that loves opera. No one knew of his loneliness. No one even suspected it. And comedy hung, as it ever does, about the heels of tragedy.

Crayford revealed himself in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States, and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music halls he had been marvellously successful. He still held interests in halls all over the States. More recently he had been one of the first men to see the possibilities in moving pictures, and had made a big pile with cinematograph halls. But always, even from the beginning, beneath the blatant cleverness, the vulgar ingenuities of the showman, there had been something else; something that had ambition not wholly vulgar, that had ideals, furtive perhaps, but definite, that had aspirations. And this something, that was of the soul of the man, was incessantly feeling its way through the absurdities, the vulgarities, the deceptions, the inanities, toward a goal that was worth the winning. Crayford had always wanted to be one of the recognized leaders of what he called "high-class artistic enterprise" in the States, and especially in his native city of New York. And he was ready to spend a lot of his "pile" to "get there."

Of late years he had been getting there. He had run a fine theater on Broadway, and had "presented" several native and foreign stars in productions which had been remarkable for the beauty and novelty of the staging and "effects." And, finally, he had built an opera house, and had "put up" a big fight against the mighty interests concentrated in the New York Metropolitan. He had dropped thousands upon thousands of dollars. But he was now a very rich man, and he was a man who was prepared to lose thousands on the road if he reached the goal at last. He was a good fighter, a man of grit, a man with a busy brain, and a profound belief in his own capacities. And he was remarkably clever. Somehow he had picked up three foreign languages. Somehow he had learned a good deal about a variety of subjects, among them music. Combative, he would yield to no opinion, even on matters of which he knew far less than those opposed to him. But he had a natural "flair" which often carried him happily through difficult situations, and helped him to "win out all right" in the end. The old habit of the showman made him inclined to look on those whom he presented in his various enterprises as material, and sometimes battled with an artistic instinct which often led him to pick out what was good from the seething mass of mediocrity. He believed profoundly in names. But he believed also in "new blood," and was for ever on the look-out for it.

He felt pretty sure he had found "new blood" at Djenan-el-Maqui.

But Claude must trust him, bow to him, be ready to follow his lead of a long experience if he was to do anything with Claude's work. Great names he let alone. They had captured the public and had to be trusted. But people without names must be malleable as wax is. Otherwise he would not touch them.

Such was the man who entered into the conflict with Claude. Charmian was passionately on his side because of ambition. Alston Lake was on his side because of gratitude, and in expectation.

The opera was promising, but it had to be "made over," and Crayford was absolutely resolved that made over it should be in accordance with his ideas.

"I don't spend thousands over a thing unless I have my say in what it's to be like," he remarked, with a twist of his body, at a crisis of the conflict with Claude. "I wouldn't do it. It's me that is out to lose if the darned thing's a failure."

There was a silence. The discussion had been long and ardent. Outside, the heat brooded almost sternly over the land, for the sky was covered with a film of gray, unbroken by any crevice through which the blue could be seen. It was a day on which nerves get unstrung, on which the calmest, most equable people are apt to lose their tempers suddenly, unexpectedly.

Claude had felt as if he were being steadily thrashed with light little rods, which drew no blood, but which were gradually bruising him, bruising every part of him. But when Crayford said these last sentences it seemed to Claude as if the blood came oozing out in tiny drops. And from the very depths of him, of the real genuine man who lay in concealment, rose a lava stream of contempt, of rage. He opened his lips to give it freedom. But Charmian spoke quickly, anxiously, and her eyes travelled swiftly from Claude's face to Alston's, and to Crayford's.

"Then if we—I mean if my husband does what you wish, you will spend thousands over it?" she said, "you will produce it, give it its chance?"

Never yet had that question been asked. Never had Crayford said anything definite. Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate for himself in accordance with the dictates of the hidden man within him. He strove to summon up that strength, but a sense of pity, that perhaps really was akin to love, intervened to prevent its advent. Charmian's eyes seemed to hold her soul in that moment. He could not strike it down into the dust of despair.

Crayford's eyebrows twitched violently, and he turned the big cigar that was between his lips round and round. Then he took it out of his mouth, looked at Charmian, and said:

"Yah!"

Charmian turned and looked into Claude's eyes. She did not say a word. But her eyes were a mandate, and they were also a plea. They drove back, beat down the hidden man into the depths where he made his dwelling.

"Well," said Crayford roughly, almost rudely, to Claude, "how's it going to be? I want to know just where I am in this thing. This aren't the only enterprise I've got on the stocks by a long way. I wasn't born and bred a nigger, nor yet an Arab, and I can't sit sweltering here for ever trying to find out where I am and where I'm coming to. We've got to get down to business. The little lady is worth a ton of men, composers or not. She's got us to the point, and now there's no getting away from it. I'm stuck, dead stuck, on this libretto. Now, it's not a bit of use your getting red and firing up, my boy. I'm not saying a word against you and your music. But the first thing is the libretto. Why, how could you write an opera without a libretto? Just tell me that! Very well, then. You've got the best libretto since 'Carmen,' and you've got to write the best opera since 'Carmen.' Well, seems to me you've made a good start, but you're too far away from ordinary folk. Now, don't think I want you to play down. I don't. I've got a big reputation in the States, though you mayn't think it, and I can't afford to spoil it. Play for the center. That's my motto. Shoot to hit the bull's eye, not a couple of feet above it."

"Hear, hear!" broke in Lake, in his strong baritone.

"Ah!" breathed Charmian.

Crayford almost swelled with satisfaction at this dual backing. Again he twisted his body, and threw back his head with a movement he probably thought Napoleonic.

"Play for the center! That's the game. Now you're aiming above it, and my business is to bring you to the center. Why, my boy"—his tone was changing under the influence of self-satisfaction, was becoming almost paternal—"all I, all we want is your own good. All we want is a big success, like that chap Sennier has made, or a bit bigger—eh, little lady? Why should you think we are your enemies?"

"Enemies! I never said that!" interrupted Claude.

His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of the room, out of the villa, to rush away—away into some desert place, and to be alone.

"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."

"I can't help—how would you have me look?"

"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"

"Claudie, we all only want—"

"I know—I know!"

He clenched his wet hands.

"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."

"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell—don't mind me, little lady! I'll stop right there!—we're getting on to something that's going to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about—'s going to astonish—the—world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"

And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.

And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm—a genuine enthusiasm—of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be carried on by their hopes.

As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it.

"Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or "that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"—thought of by himself—"makes your opera a different thing."

And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young people.

"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and I'll make him another Battistini. See here"—and he turned sharply to Claude—"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why, it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the opera."

That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he, the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all. But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in hand.

"He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore.

Claude was tempted to reply:

"No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way."

But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities, which delighted her.

"She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never met an Englishwoman like her!"

Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man, recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She felt almost as if she were a creator.

"If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me."

While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised by Crayford—and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of those about him, scourged to his work by their desires—Lake studied the baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian "put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects."

"We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now."

"Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried.

"And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he answered. "Now, see here—"

They plunged deep into the libretto.

Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the opera.

"We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs. I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind."

That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of odd people.

"I'm out for dancers to-day," he said one morning.

And they set off to "put Algiers through the sieve" for dancing girls. They found painters, and Crayford took them to the Casbah, and to other nooks and corners of the town, to make drawings for him to carry away to New York as a guide to his scenic artist. They got hold of a Fakir, who had drifted from India to North Africa, and Crayford engaged him on the spot to appear in one of the scenes and perform some of his marvels.

"Claude"—the composer was Claude to him now—"can write in something weird to go with it," he said.

And Charmian of course agreed.

It had been decided that the opera should be produced at the New Era Opera House some time in the New Year, if Claude carried out faithfully all the changes which Crayford demanded.

"He will. He has promised to do everything you wish," said Charmian.

"You stand by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the changes. I can see that."

"It will be all right, I promise you. Claude isn't so mad as to lose the chance you are offering him."

"It's the chance of a lifetime. I can tell you that."

"He realizes it."

"I'll tell you something. Only you needn't go telling everybody."

"I won't tell a soul."

"And watch out for the bodies, too. Well, I'm going to run Claude against Jacques Sennier. Mind you, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for the libretto. Seems to me the music is good enough to carry it, and it's going to be a lot better now I've made it over. Sennier's new opera is expected to be ready for March at latest. We'll produce ours"—Charmian thrilled at that word—"just about the same time, a day or two before, or after. I'll get together a cast that no opera house in this world or the next can better. I'll have scenery and effects such as haven't been seen on any stage in the world before. I'll show the Metropolitan what opera is, and I'll give them and Sennier a knock out, or I'm only fit to run cinematograph shows, and take about fakes through the one night stands. But Claude's got to back me up. I don't sign any contract till every note in his score's in its place."

"But you'll be in America when he finishes it."

"That don't matter. You're here to see he don't make any changes from what I've fixed on. We've got that all cut and dried now. It's only the writing's got to be done. I'll trust him for that. But there's not a scene that's to be cut out, or a situation to be altered, now I've fixed everything up. If you cable me, 'Opera finished according to decision,' I'll take your word, get out a contract, and go right ahead. You'll have to bring him over."

"Of course! Of course!"

"And I'll get up a boom for you both that'll make the Senniers look like old bones."

He suddenly twisted his body, stuck out his under jaw, and said in a grim and determined voice which Charmian scarcely recognized as his:

"I've got to down the Metropolitan crowd this winter. I've got to do it if I spend four hundred thousand dollars over it."

He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:

"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it, though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish of it."

"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.

From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.