cret that he was
doing, could do, nothing in the room arranged by Charmian, in the
atmosphere created by Charmian.

One thing specially troubled him.

So long as he had lived alone he had never felt as if his art, or
perhaps rather his method of giving himself to it, had any trait of
effeminacy. It had seemed quite natural to him to be shut up in his own
"diggings," isolated, with only a couple of devoted servants, and
golden-haired Fan in the distance, being as natural as he was. It had
never occurred to him that his life was specially odd.

But now he often did feel as if there were something effeminate in the
young composer at home, perpetually in the house, with his wife and a
lot of women. The smallness of the house, of his workroom, emphasized
this feeling. Although an almost dreadful silence was preserved whenever
he was supposed to be working his very soul seemed to hear the perpetual
rustle of skirts. The fact that five women were keeping quiet on his
account made him feel as if he were an effeminate fool, feel that if his
art was a thing unworthy of a man's devotion, that in following it, in
sacrificing to it, he was doing himself harm, was undermining his own
masculinity.

This sensation grew in him. He envied the men whose work took them from
home. He longed, after breakfast, to put on hat and coat and sally out.
He thought of the text, "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor
until the evening." If only he could go forth! If only he could forget
the existence of his intent wife, of those four hushed and wondering
maids every day for six or eight hours. He fell into deep despondencies,
sometimes into silent rages which seemed to eat into his heart.

During this time Charmian was beginning to "put out feelers." Her work
for Claude, that is, her work outside the little house in Kensington
Square, was to be social. Women can do very much in the social way. And
she knew herself well equipped for the task in hand. Her heart was in
it, too. She felt sure of that. Even to herself she never used the words
"worldly ambition." The task was a noble one, to make the career of the
man she believed in and loved glorious, to bring him to renown. While he
was shut up, working in the little room she had made so cozy, so
"atmospheric," she would be at work for him in the world they were
destined to conquer.

All the "set" had come to call in Kensington Square. Most of them were
surprised at the match. They recogni