t come to the house. As they
never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and
then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them.
Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in,
composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house,
and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a
conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he
disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push
everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one
afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional
acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or
three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came
into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.

"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.

He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by
playing before sitting down to work.

"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard
you playing, and knew you were in."

"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"

"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."

Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out
at the piano.

"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.

"In the drawing-room, sir."

"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."

He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely
ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it,
looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon
him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world
with which he had nothing to do.

"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with
a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."

Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly
stiff.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and--"

He touched her powerful hand.

"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too
bad of me."

He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man
as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her.
Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position,
her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified?
No doubt sh