"Carried away! By what?"
"Well, it is evidently a great moment in Madame Sennier's life. One must sympathize."
Charmian looked and saw two spots of color burning high up on his cheeks. His voice had suddenly quivered.
"I should think so," said Mrs. Mansfield. "This evening probably means more to Madame Sennier even than to her husband."
Charmian said nothing more till the end of the evening. Beneath the radiant coolness of her demeanor, the air of triumphant self-possession, she was secretly quivering with excitement. She feared to betray herself. Soon she was spellbound by the music of the last act and by the wonderful performance of Annie Meredith. As she listened, leaning forward in the box, and always feeling intensely the nearness to her of Heath, and of Heath's strong musical talent, she remembered something she had once said in the drawing-room in Berkeley Square, "We want a new note." Here was the new note in French music, the new talent given to the wondering and delighted world to-night. To-morrow doubtless Europe and America would know that the husband of the red-haired woman opposite had taken his place among the famous men to whom the world must pay attention. From to-morrow thousands of art lovers would be looking toward Jacques Sennier with expectation, the curious expectation of those who crave for fresh food on which they may feed their intellects, and their souls. The great tonic of a new development in art was offered to all those who cared to take it by the man who would probably be staring from behind the footlights at the crowd in a few moments.
If only the new note had been English!
"It shall be! It shall be!" Charmian repeated to herself.
She looked again and again at Madame Sennier, striving to grasp the secret of her will for another, even while she gave herself to the enchantment of the music. But for that woman in all probability the music would never have been given life. Somewhere, far down in the mystery of an individual, it would have lain, corpse-like. A woman had willed that it should live. She deserved the homage she had received, and would receive to-night. For she had made her man do a great thing, because she had helped him to understand his own greatness.
Suddenly, out of the almost chaotic excitement caused in Charmian by the music, and by her secret infatuation, concrete knowledge seemed to detach itself and to arise. As, when she had looked at the island in the Algerian Garden, she had felt "I shall be here some day with him!" so now she seemed to be aware that the future would show a brilliant crowd assembled in some great theater, not for Jacques Sennier, but for one near her. Really she was violently willing that it should be so. But she thought she was receiving—from whom, or from what, she could not tell—a mysterious message.
And the red-haired woman's place was filled by another.