slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined
features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was
intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be
unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a
carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a
faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to
grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather
surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic.
His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve
links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first
introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his
eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong
imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His
eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little
brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance
which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It
showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to
be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary.

"I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I
wanted to know the great fighter."

She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some
people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave
her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it
suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do
with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence.

Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows
sometimes suddenly upward.

"A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he
said, speaking rapidly.

"They say over here you've got the worst of it this season."

"Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure."

"I hope it isn't true."

"Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr.
Crayford.

"Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his
_Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life."

"Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another
Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how."

"I do hope you'll be successful."

"I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Cray