that?"

"No! Are you angry, mother?"

"No. But I like young things to look really young as long as they can.
And to me the first touch of make-up suggests the useless struggle
against old age. Now I'm not very old yet, not fifty. But I've let my
hair become white."

"And how it suits you, my beautiful mother!"

"That's my little compensation. A few visits to Bond Street might make
me look ten years younger than I do, but if I paid them, do you know I
think I should lose one or two friendships I value very much."

Mrs. Mansfield paused.

"Lose--friendships?" Charmian almost faltered.

"Yes. Some of the best men value sincerity of appearance in a woman more
than perhaps you would believe to be possible."

"In friendship!" Charmian almost whispered.

Again there was a pause. Mrs. Mansfield knew very well that a sentence
from her at this moment would provoke in Charmian an outburst of
sincerity. But she hesitated to speak that sentence. For a voice within
her whispered, "Am I on Charmian's side?"

After a moment she got up.

"Bedtime," she said.

"Yes, yes."

Charmian kissed her mother lightly first on one eyelid then on the
other.

"Dearest, it is good to be back with you."

"But you loved Algiers, I think."

"Did I? I suppose I did."

"I must get a book," said Mrs. Mansfield, going toward a bookcase.

When she turned round with a volume of Browning in her hand Charmian had
vanished.

Mrs. Mansfield did not regret the silence that had saved her from
Charmian's sincerity. In reply to it what could she have said to help
her child toward happiness?

For did not the fact that Charmian had made up her face because she
loved Claude Heath show a gulf between her and him that could surely
never be bridged?

CHAPTER XI

Heath was troubled and was angry with himself for being troubled.
Looking back it seemed to him that he had taken a false step when he
consented to that dinner with Max Elliot. Surely since that evening he
had never been wholly at peace. And yet on that evening he had entered
into his great friendship with Mrs. Mansfield. He could not wish that
annulled. It added value to his life. But Mrs. Shiffney and Charmian in
combination had come into his life with her. And they began to vex his
spirit. He felt as if they represented a great body of opinion which was
set against a deep conviction of his own. Their motto was, "The world
for the artist." And what was his, or what had been h