are traitors. Gladly would they kill a genius of France!"

When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn,
Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away
because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an
instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was
coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be
gratified. And now she had gone to Constantine, and taken Madame Sennier
with her. Charmian remembered her inadvertence of the day before when
she had said, perhaps scarcely with truth, that Jacob Crayford admired
Claude's talent; the Frenchwoman's almost strangely blank expression and
apparent utter indifference, her own uneasiness. That uneasiness
returned now, and was accentuated. But what could happen? What could
either Madame Sennier or Adelaide Shiffney do to disturb her peace or
interfere with her life or Claude's? Nothing surely. Yet she felt as if
they were both hostile to her, were set against all she wished for. And
she felt as if she had been like an angry child when she had talked of
her husband to Madame Sennier. Women--clever, influential women--can do
much either for or against a man who enters on a public career.

Charmian longed to say all that was in her heart to Susan Fleet. But,
blaming herself for lack of self-control on the previous day, she
resolved to exercise self-control now. So she only kissed Susan and
wished her "Good-night."

"I know I shan't sleep," she said.

"Why not?"

"Sennier's playing has stirred me up too much."

"Resolve quietly to sleep, and I think you will."

Charmian did not tell Susan that she was quite incapable at that moment
of resolving quietly on anything.

She lay awake nearly all night.

Meanwhile Mrs. Shiffney, Madame Sennier, and Max Elliot were in the
night-train travelling to Constantine.

It had all been arranged with Mrs. Shiffney's usual apparently careless
abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the
garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on
to the big terrace, and had said:

"I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away
to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."

Max Elliot had looked at her for a moment rather sharply. Then his mind
had been diverted by the lamentations of the composer, calling attention
to the danger he ran in venturing near to Armand G