tated,
was perhaps afraid. In his restless mood, in his strong excitement, he
wanted to crush that thing down, to stifle its voice. Caution seemed to
him almost effeminate just then. He remembered how one day Charmian had
said to him, after an argument about psychology: "Really, Mr. Heath,
whatever you may say, your strongest instinct is a selfish one, the
instinct of self-preservation."

What was Jacques Sennier's strongest instinct?

Madame Sennier had made a powerful impression on Heath, and he had been
greatly flattered by the deep attention with which she had listened to
what he had to say about her husband's opera.

"Here's a man who knows what he is talking about," she exclaimed, when
he finished speaking. When he got up to leave the box she had looked
full into his eyes and said: "You are going to do something, too."

Could Jacques Sennier have won his triumph alone?

Impulse was boiling up in Heath. After all that had happened that night
he felt as if he could not go to bed without accomplishing some decisive
action. Powers were on tiptoe within him surely ready for the giant
leap.

He got up, went to the piano, went to his writing-table, fingered the
manuscript paper covered with tiny notes which lay scattered upon it.
But, no, it would be absurd, mad, to begin to work at such an hour. And,
beside, he could not work. He could not be patient. He wanted to do
something with a rush, to change his life in a moment, to take a leap
forward, as Sennier had done that night, a leap from shadow into light.
He wanted to grasp something, to have a new experience. All the long
refusal of his life, which had not seemed to cost him very much till
this moment, abruptly, revengefully attacked him in the very soul,
crying: "You must pay for me! Pay! Pay!" He hated the thought of his
remote and solitary life. He hated the memory of the lonely evenings
passed in the study of scores, or in composition, by the lamp that shed
a restricted light.

The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed,
he lusted for fame.

Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."

Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been
something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet
surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed
venom, and that she alone could supply it.

The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, kne