"Afraid of hearing what the foreign composers of your own age are doing, of comparing their talents with your own. That's so English! Never mind what the rest of the world is about! We'll go on in our own way! It seems so valiant, doesn't it? And really it's nothing but cowardice, fear of being forced to see that others are advancing while we are standing still. I'm sick of English stolidity!"
Heath's eyes shown with something that looked like anger.
"I really don't think I'm afraid!" he said stiffly.
Perhaps to prove that he was not, he rescinded his refusal and came to the première with the Mansfields. It was a triumph for Charmian, but she did not show that she knew it.
Heath was in his most reserved mood. He had the manner of the defiant male lured from behind his defenses into the open against his will. Some intelligence within him knew that his cold stiffness was rather ridiculous, and made him unhappy. Mrs. Mansfield was really sorry for him.
Nothing is more humorously tragic than pleasure indulged in under protest. And Heath's protest was painfully apparent.
Charmian, who was looking her best, her most self-possessed, a radiant minx, with fleeting hints of depths and softnesses, half veiled by the firm habit of the world, seemed to tower morally above the composer. He marvelled afresh at the triumphant composure of modern girlhood. Sitting between the two women in the box—no one else had been asked to join them—he looked out, almost shyly, at the crowded and brilliant house. Mrs. Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair. In the box next the stage on the same side were the Max Elliots with Sir Hilary Burnington and Lady Mildred.
Charmian looked eagerly about the house, putting up her opera-glasses, finding everywhere friends and acquaintances. She frankly loved the world with the energy of her youth.
At this moment the sight of the huge and crowded theater, full of watchful eyes and whispering lips, full of brains and souls waiting to be fed, the sound of its hum and stir, sent a warm thrill through her, thrill of expectation, of desire. She thought of that man, Jacques Sennier, hidden somewhere, the cause of all that was happening in the house, of all that would happen almost immediately upon the stage. She envied him with intensity. Then she looked at Claude Heath's rather grim and constrained expression. Was it possible that Heath did not share her feeling of envy?
There was a tap at the door. Heath sprang up and opened it. Paul Lane's pale and discontented face appeared.