im in her life.

One day while she was doing this she heard the distant sound of a piano
above her. Claude was playing over a melody which he had just composed
for the opening scene of the opera. Charmian got up, went to the window,
leaned out, and listened. And immediately the nightmare sensation
dropped from her. She was, or felt as if she were, conscious of
permanence, stability. Her connection with that man above her, who was
playing upon the piano, suddenly seemed durable, almost as if it would
be everlasting. Claude was "her man," his talent belonged to her. She
could not conceive of herself deprived of them, of her life without
them.

Early in the New Year the Heaths received a visit from Armand Gillier,
the writer of Claude's libretto. He had come over from Paris to see his
family, who lived at St. Eugene. Charmian had met him in Paris, but
Claude had never seen him, though he had corresponded with him, and
sent him a cheque of L100 for his work.

Armand Gillier was a small, rather square built man of thirty-two, with
a very polite manner and a decidedly brusque mind. His face was
handsome, with a straight nose, strong jaw, and large, widely opened,
and very expressive dark eyes. A vigorous and unusually broad moustache
curled upward above his sensual mouth. And the dark hair which closely
covered his well-shaped head was drenched with eau de quinine.

Gillier was not a gentleman. His father was a small vinegrower and
cultivator, who had been rather disgusted by the fugues of his eldest
son, but who was now resigned to the latter's _etranges folies_. The
fact that Armand, after preposterously joining the Foreign Legion, and
then preposterously leaving it, had actually been paid a hundred pounds
down for a piece of literary work, had made his father have some hopes
of him.

When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui Claude was at work, and Charmian
received him. She was delighted to have such a visitor. Here was a
denizen of the real Bohemia, and one who, by the strange ties of
ambition, was closely connected with Claude and herself. She sat with
the writer in the cool and secretive drawing-room, smoking cigarettes
with him, and preparing him for Claude.

This man must "fire" Claude.

Gillier had been born and brought up in Algeria. All that was strange to
the Heaths was commonplace to him. But he had an original and forcible
mind and a keen sense of the workings of environment and circumstance
upon humanity. At