w
nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital
force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She
was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must
have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of
greatness.

He loved her just then for that.

"Oh--and good-night, Mr. Heath."

Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.

Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big
room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was
dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn
his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of
inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of
Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to
reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its
atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his
opera here. In vain to try.

With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table,
snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them
across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere
futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of
unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was
bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he
resolved to have done with it.

Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly
down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason,
but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick
whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had
known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know
ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to
the instinct of love.

He took a pen, leaned over the table, wrote a letter swiftly, violently
even. His pen seemed to form the words by itself. He was unconscious of
guiding it. The letter was not long, only two sides of a sheet. He
blotted it, thrust it into an envelope, addressed, closed, and stamped
it, got up, took his hat, and went out of the studio.

In a moment he was in the deserted road. The large policeman, who had
eyed him with such grave suspicion, was gone. No one was in sight. The
silver of the moonlight had given place to a faint grayness, a weariness
of