em, and thought:

"If only my letter lay there instead!"

CHAPTER XIV

It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude
Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new
strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both
of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if
possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful.

For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to
Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan,
Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their
feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said:

"Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there.
Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at
by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!"

Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church
door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge.

Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and
Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old
life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of
fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude
to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter
she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her
ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would
emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for
laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done,
with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must
not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient.

The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and
Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.

Charmian thought of this house in Kensington Square as a compromise.
Claude had wished to give up Mullion House on his marriage. Seeing the
obligation to enter upon a new way of life before him he had resolved,
almost with fierceness, to break away from his austere past, to destroy,
so far as was possible, all associations that linked him with it. With
an intensity that was honorable, he set out to make a success of his
life with Charmian. To do that, he felt that he must create a great
change in himself. He had become wedded to habits. Those habits must all
be divorced from him