ing clamors for more."

"I have heard a new note in English music," observed a middle-aged, bald
and lively-looking man, who was sitting on the opposite side of the
drawing-room in Berkeley Square.

"Oh, but, Max, you always--"

"An absolutely new note," interrupted Max Elliot with enthusiastic
emphasis, turning to the man with the sarcastic mouth who had just
spoken. "Your French blood makes you so inclined to incredulity, Paul,
that you are incapable of believing anything but that I am carried
away."

"As usual!"

"As sometimes happens, I admit. But you will allow that in matters
musical my opinion is worth something, my serious and deliberately
formed opinion."

"How long has this opinion been forming?"

"Some months."

"Some months!" exclaimed Charmian. "You've kept your new note to
yourself all that time! Is it a woman? But of course it can't be. I
don't believe there will ever be a great woman composer."

"It is not a woman."

"Was it born in the gutter?" asked Paul Lane.

"No."

"Don't say it's aristocratic!" said Charmian, slightly screwing up her
rather Japanese-looking eyes. "I cannot believe that anything really
original in soul, really intense, could emanate from the British
peerage. I know it too well."

"It is neither aristocratic nor from the gutter. It is of the middle
classes. Its father is a banker in the West of England."

"A banker!" said Charmian in a deplorable voice.

"It is Cornish."

"Cornish! That's better. Strange things sometimes come out of Cornwall."

"It has a little money of its own."

"And its name--"

"Is Claude Heath."

"Claude Heath," slowly repeated Charmian. "The name means nothing to me.
Do you know it, Mr. Lane?"

Paul Lane shook his smooth black head.

"Heath has not published anything," said Max Elliot, quite unmoved by
the scepticism with which the atmosphere of Mrs. Mansfield's
drawing-room was obviously charged.

"Not even a Te Deum?" asked Charmian.

"No, though I confess he has composed one."

"If he has composed a Te Deum I give him up. He is _vieux jeu_. He
should go and live in the Crystal Palace."

"And it's superb!" added Max Elliot. "Till I heard it I never realized
what the noble words of the Te Deum meant."

Suddenly he got up and moved toward the window murmuring, "All the Earth
doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting."

There was a silence in the room. Charmian's eyes suddenly filled with
tears, she scarcely knew why. She