ith your talent!"

"Ah, that is just it!"

His eyes shone with excitement as he went on, leaning toward her, and
speaking almost with violence.

"That is just it! My talent for the stage is great, I have always known
that. Even when my work was refused once, a second, a third time, I knew
it. 'The day will come,' I thought, 'when those who now refuse my work
will come crawling to me to get me to write for them. Now I am told to
go! Then they will seek me.' Yes"--he paused, finished his glass of
brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great
effort after self-control--"but is your husband's talent for the stage
as great as mine? I doubt it."

"Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you
to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet,
not a note of it."

"No. And that enables me--"

"Enables you to do what? Why didn't you finish your sentence, Monsieur
Gillier?"

"Madame, if you are going to be angry with me--"

"Angry! My dear Monsieur Gillier, I am not angry! What can you be
thinking of?"

"I feared by your words, your manner--"

"I assure you--besides, what is there to be angry about? But do finish
what you were saying."

"I was about to say that the fact that I have not yet heard any of your
husband's music to my libretto enables me, without any offense--personal
offense--pronouncing any sort of judgment--to approach you--" He paused.
The expression in her eyes made him pause. He fidgeted rather uneasily
in his chair, and looked away from her to the fountain.

"Yes?" said Charmian.

"Madame?"

"Please tell me what it is you want of me, or my husband, or of both of
us."

"I do not--I have not said I want anything. But it is true I want
success. I want it for this work of mine. Since I have been in
Constantine with Monsieur Heath I have--very reluctantly, madame,
believe me!--come to the conclusion that he and I are not suited to be
associated together in the production of a work of art. We are too
different the one from the other. I am an Algerian ex-soldier, a man who
has gone into the depths of life. He is an English Puritan who never has
lived, and never will live. I have done all I could to make him
understand something of the life not merely in, but that
underlies--_underlies_--my libretto. My efforts--well, what can I
say?"--he flung out his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is only the difference between the French