interested in
people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of
becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to
her, and was drawn, in her turn, to them.

Claude Heath had brought into her life something her other friends had
not given her. She realized this clearly when she first considered
Charmian in connection with herself and him. If he ceased from her life,
sank away into the crowd of unseen men, he would leave a gap which
another could not fill. She had a feeling that she was valuable to him.
She did not know exactly how or why. And he was valuable to her.

But of course Charmian was the first interest in her life, had the
first claim upon her consideration. She sat wondering what it was in
Heath which the girl disliked, what it was in Charmian which, perhaps,
troubled or irritated Heath.

Charmian was out that day at an afternoon concert, and Mrs. Mansfield
had made an engagement to go to tea with Heath in his little old house
near St. Petersburg Place. She had never yet visited him, although she
had known him for nearly three months. And she had never heard a note of
his music. The latter fact did not strike her as strange. She had never
mentioned her dead husband to him.

Max Elliot had at first been perturbed by this reticence of the
musician. He had specially wished Mrs. Mansfield to hear what he had
heard. After that evening in Cadogan Square he had several times asked:
"Well, have you heard the Te Deum?" or "Has Heath played any of his
compositions to you yet?" To Mrs. Mansfield's invariable unembarrassed
"No!" he gave a shrug of the shoulders, a "He's an extraordinary
fellow!" or a "Well, I've made a failure of it this time!" Once he
added: "Don't you want to hear his music?" "Not unless he wants me to
hear it," Mrs. Mansfield replied. Elliot looked at her for a minute with
his large, prominent and kind eyes, and said: "No wonder you're adored
by your friends!" Several times since the evening in Cadogan Square he
had heard Heath play his compositions, and he now began to feel as if he
owed this pleasure to his busy and almost vulgar curiosity about musical
development and the progress of artists, as if Heath's reserve were his
greatest proof of regard and friendship. He had not succeeded in
persuading Heath to come to one of his Sunday musical evenings, at which
crowds of people in society and many artists assembled. Mrs. Mansfield
taught him not to attempt an