In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the "little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock, compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people for whom the preparations had been made came in.

"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.

She turned.

"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white heather?"

She had Alston's red roses in her hand.

"I am going to put your roses in water now."

She turned again to the waiter.

"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper at once."

"Certainly, ma'am!"

"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied with it."

She picked it up and handed it to Alston.

"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."

She went away, smiling.

The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone together.

Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.

"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot of people round us, or—really to tell you, I mean, how fine your performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve this great success."

Alston wrung his friend's hand.

"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs. Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have scored in it."

"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."

"I shall never enjoy singing any rÔle so much as I have enjoyed singing your Spahi."

"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any rÔle better," said Claude.

Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.

"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper! Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"

For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.

"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite finished?"

"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely upon her lively chattering.

Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.

"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost afraid—here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I think. Suppose we—"

"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his glass.

"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.

"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"

"Yes."

"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."

"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"

"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about Blue Points—"

She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the door of the lobby.

Charmian moved uneasily.

"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."

She got up.

"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.

He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.

"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.

"Hardly!"

"What is it, Claude?"

"A note or letter."

"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"

"Apparently."

"Do read it. But have you finished?"

"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."

He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat, and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table. Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.

"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.

"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."

"Well, then—"

She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.

"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.

"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"—his kind and honest eyes went from Charmian to Claude—"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must both want a good long rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"

He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar, lit it for him.

"Well, Mrs. Charmian—" he said.

He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather blunt features looked boyish and emotional.

"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to the critics and the public."

He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.

"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."

He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.

"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.

Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing. When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do. And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and Claude came in.

"What a lot you had to say to each—" she began.

She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.

"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after a moment of silence.

"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all till to-morrow. Do you mind?"

"No."

Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing expression which had stopped the words on her lips. Always Claude's face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.

"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure I couldn't."

"You were telling him again how splendidly—"

"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper. I had to tell him something else—what I thought of my own."

"What you—what you thought of your own!"

"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless, soulless, hateful work."

"Claude!" she faltered.

"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"—his eyes pierced her—"do you dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"

"How can you—oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will, a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind. "It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't—"

"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I shall not believe you."

She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight against the malign power of the audience.

"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"

His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak, to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius, that everyone would recognize it as such soon, very soon, if not now, immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his gaze.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"

He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers—Madre's cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.

"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.

She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the other corner of the sofa beside him.

"I want you to read that."

He gave her the letter.

"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.

She took the letter and read.

Charmian read this letter slowly, not missing a word. As she read she bent her head lower and lower; she almost crouched over the letter. When she had finished it she sat quite still without raising her eyes for a long time. The letter had vanished from her sight. And how much else had vanished! In that moment little or nothing seemed left.

At last, as she did not move, Claude said, "You've finished?"

"You've finished the letter?"

"Yes."

"May I have it, then?"

She knew he was holding out his hand. She made a great effort, lifted her hand, and gave him Van Brinen's letter without looking at him. She heard the thin paper rustle as he folded it.

"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why? Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of weakness."

Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.

"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"

"Claude!"

Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.

"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company, before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."

He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and walked toward the farther wall of the room.

"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing to you?"

He had turned.

"No," she said.

"Crayford said nothing?"

"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"

"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"

She was silent.

"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself. And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And you—you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself, and you least of all!"

"Claude!"

"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to guide me in my art life, to bring the poor weak fellow, who had some talent, but who didn't know how to apply it, into the light of success! You meant to make me from the first, and that meant unmaking the man you had married, the man who had lived apart in the odd, little unfashionable Bayswater house, who had lived the odd, little unfashionable life, composing Te Deums and Bible rubbish, the man whom nobody knew, and who didn't specially want to know anyone, except his friends. You thought I was an eccentricity—"

"No, no!" she almost faltered, bending under the storm of unreserve which had broken in this reserved man.

"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was meant to do, what I could do, drawing my inspiration not from the fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts, which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe—I believe in my soul it's the only chance for a man."

He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:

"The only chance for a man."

He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.

"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that I fancied I might make something of since we married, The Hound of Heaven, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do it. But I've got to build in freedom."

His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes not of a man crushed but of a man released.

She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.

"In—freedom?" she almost whispered.

She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the failure before the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt, had completely overwhelmed her.

In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm ground.

"In freedom!" she said again. "What—what do you mean?"

He was silent. A change had come into his face, a faint and dawning look of surprise.

"What do you mean?" she repeated.

And now there was a sharp edge to her voice.

"That I must take back the complete artistic freedom which I have never had since we married, that I must have it as I had it before I ever saw you."

She got slowly up from the sofa.

"Is that—all you mean?" she said.

"All! Isn't it enough?"

"But is it all? I want to know—I must know!"

The look in her face startled him. Never before had he seen her look like that. Never had he dreamed that she could look like that. It was as if womanhood surged up in her. Her face was distorted, was almost ugly. The features seemed suddenly sharpened, almost horribly salient. But her eyes held an expression of anxiety, of hunger, of something else that went to his heart. He dropped his hand from the piano and moved nearer to her.

"Is that all you meant by freedom?"

"Yes."

She sighed and went forward against him.

"Did you think—do you care?" he stammered.

All the dominating force had suddenly departed from him. But he put his arms around her.

"Do you care for the man who has failed?"

"Yes, yes!"

She put her arms slowly, almost feebly, round his neck.

"Yes, yes, yes!"

She kept on repeating the word, breathing it against his cheek, breathing it against his lips, till his lips stifled it on hers.

At last she took her lips away. Their eyes almost touched as she gazed into his, and said:

"It was always the man. Perhaps I didn't know it, but it was—the man, not the triumph."