t! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was
a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that
high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."

"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a
genius."

At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man,
which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of
melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words
intensified it.

"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he
said, with a bluntness not usual in him.

"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget
things Max Elliot has said about you--long ago. And Madre thinks--I know
that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some
of your things."

"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.

He had never before asked his wife what she thought of his music. She
had often spoken about it, but never because he had asked her to. But
this apparently was to be an evening of a certain frankness. Charmian
had evidently planned that it should be so. He would try to meet her.

"That's partly what I wanted to talk about to-night."

Claude felt as if something in him suddenly curled up. Was Charmian
about to criticize his works unfavorably, severely perhaps? At once he
felt within him a sort of angry contempt for her judgment.

Charmian was faintly conscious of his fierce independence, as she had
been on the night of their first meeting; of the something strong and
permanent which his manner so often contradicted, a mental remoteness
which was disagreeable to her, but which impressed her. To-night,
however, she was resolved to play the Madame Sennier to her husband, to
bring up battalions of will.

"Well?" Claude said.

"I think, just as I know Madre does, that your things are wonderful. But
I don't think they are for everybody."

"For everybody! How do you mean?"

"Oh, I know the bad taste of the crowd. Why, Madre always laughs at me
for my horror of the crowd. But there is now a big cosmopolitan public
which has taste. Look at the success of Strauss, for instance, of
Debussy, and now of Jacques Sennier--our own Elgar, too! What I mean is
that perhaps the things you have done hitherto are for the very few.
There is something terrible about them, I think. They might almost
frighten people. They might almost make people dislike you