iot! You know she arranges everything for her husband."

"Do I? Do I really? Ah, there is Crayford!"

"Where?" said Charmian, turning round rather sharply.

"He's going up to Adelaide now. He's taking her hand, just over there.
Margot Drake is speaking to him."

"Margot--of course! But I can't see them."

Max Elliot moved.

"If you stand here. Are you so very anxious to see him?"

Charmian saw that he was slightly surprised.

"Because I've heard so much about the New York battle from Margot."

"To be sure!"

"What--that little man!"

"Why not?"

"With the tiny beard! It's the tiniest beard I ever saw."

"More brain than beard," said Max Elliot. "I can assure you Mr. Crayford
is one of the most energetic, determined, enterprising, and courageous
men on either side of the Atlantic. Diabolically clever, too, in his
way, but an idealist at heart. Some people in America think that last
fact puts him at a disadvantage as a manager. It certainly gives him
point and even charm as a man."

"I should like very much to know him," said Charmian. "Of course you
know him?"

"Yes."

"Do introduce me to him."

She had seen a faintly doubtful expression flit rapidly across his face,
and noticed that Mr. Crayford was already surrounded. Adelaide Shiffney
kept him in conversation. Margot Drake stood close to him, and fixed
her dark eyes upon him with an expression of still determination. Paul
Lane had come up to the group. Three or four well-known singers were
converging upon it from different parts of the room. Charmian quite
understood. But she thought of the conversation in the studio which
marked the beginning of a new epoch in her life with Claude, and she
repeated quietly, but with determination:

"Please introduce me to him."

CHAPTER XVII

A woman knows in a moment whether a man is susceptible to woman's charm,
to sex charm, or not. There are men who love, who have loved, or who
will love, a woman. And there are men who love women. Charmian had not
been with Mr. Jacob Crayford for more than two minutes before she knew
that he belonged to the latter class. She only spent some five minutes
in his company, after Max Elliot had introduced them to each other. But
she came away from Grosvenor Square with a very definite conception of
his personality.

Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown
eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head
which was