But he was becoming much more at home in Charmian's company. She stirred him at moments into unexpected bursts of almost boyish gaiety. She knew how to involve him in eager arguments.
One day, as he was about to leave the house in Berkeley Square he said to Mrs. Mansfield:
"Miss Charmian ought to have some big object in life on which she could concentrate. She has powers, you know."
When he was gone Mrs. Mansfield smiled and sighed.
"And when will he find out that he is Charmian's big object in life?" she thought.
She knew men well. Nevertheless, their stupidities sometimes surprised her. It was as if something in them obstinately refused to see.
"It's their blindness that spoils us," she said to herself. "If they could see, we should have ten commandments to obey—perhaps twenty."
CHAPTER XII
Toward the end of the London season the management of the Covent Garden Opera House startled its subscribers by announcing for production a new opera, composed by a Frenchmen called Jacques Sennier, whose name was unknown to most people. Mysteriously, as the day drew near for the first performance of this work, which was called Le Paradis Terrestre, the inner circles of the musical world were infected with an unusual excitement. Whispers went round that the new opera was quite extraordinary, epoch-making, that it was causing a prodigious impression at rehearsal, that it was absolutely original, that there was no doubt of its composer's genius. Then reports as to the composer's personality and habits began to get about. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, knew him. But she had introduced him to nobody. He was her personal prey at present. She, however, allowed it to be known that he was quite charming, but the strangest creature imaginable. It seemed that he had absolutely no moral sense, did not know what it meant. If he saw an insect trodden upon, or a fly killed on a window-pane, he could not work for days. But when his first wife—he had been married at sixteen—shot herself in front of him, on account of his persistent cruelty and infidelity, he showed no sign of distress, had the body carried out of his studio, and went on composing. Decidedly an original! Everybody was longing to know him. The libraries and the box-office of the Opera House were bombarded with demands for seats for the first performance, at which the beautiful Annie Meredith, singer, actress, dancer, speculator, and breeder of prize bulldogs, was to appear in the heroine's part.