rbance to Charmian. Had he suspected, or found out, that Charmian
imagined herself to be in love with him? He came as usual to the house.
His friendship with Mrs. Mansfield did not seem to her to have changed.
But his relation to Charmian was not what it had been. Indeed, it was
scarcely possible that it should be so. For Charmian had continued to be
definite ever since her drastic remarks at dinner on the evening of her
return. She bantered Heath, laughed at him, patronized him in the pretty
way of a pretty London girl who takes the world for her own with the
hands of youth. When she found him with her mother she did not glide
away, or remain as a mere listener while they talked. She stayed to hold
her own, sometimes even--so her mother thought, not without pathos--a
little aggressively.

Heath's curious and deep reserve, which underlay his apparent quick and
sensitive readiness to be sympathetic with those about him, to give them
what they wanted of him, was not abated by Charmian's banter, her
delicate impertinences, her laughing attacks. Mrs. Mansfield noticed
that. He turned to her still when he wished to speak for a moment out of
his heart.

But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred
him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew
how to involve him in eager arguments.

One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said
to Mrs. Mansfield:

"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could
concentrate. She has powers, you know."

When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.

"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?"
she thought.

She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised
her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.

"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they
could see, we should have ten commandments to obey--perhaps twenty."

CHAPTER XII

Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden
Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new
opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was
unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first
performance of this work, which was called _Le Paradis Terrestre_, the
inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual
excitement. Whispers went round that the