The dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps was still in his eyes. He longed, he lusted for fame.
Afterwards he said to himself: "That night I was 'out' of myself."
Charmian had spurred his nature. It tingled still. There had been something that was almost like venom in that whisper of hers, which yet surely showed her love. Perhaps instinctively she knew that he needed venom, and that she alone could supply it.
The strangest thing of all was that she had never heard his music, knew nothing at first hand of his talent, yet believed in it with such vital force, such completeness. There was something almost great in that. She was a woman who absolutely trusted her instinct. And her instinct must have told her that in him, Claude Heath, there was some particle of greatness.
He loved her just then for that.
"Oh—and good-night, Mr. Heath."
Claude's cheeks burned as if Paul Lane had laid a whip across them.
Again, as when he first entered it that night, he looked at the big room. How had he ever been able to think it cosy, home-like? It was dreary, forbidding, the sad hermitage of one who was resolved to turn his back on life, on the true life of close human relations, of inspiring intimacies, of that intercourse which should be as bread of Heaven to the soul. It was a hateful room. Nothing great, nothing to reach the hearts of men could be conceived, brought to birth in its atmosphere. Jacques Sennier, shut in alone, could never have written his opera here. In vain to try.
With an impulse of defiant anger Claude went to the writing-table, snatched up the music sheets which lay scattered upon it, tore them across and across. There should be an end to it, an end to austere futilities which led, which could lead, to nothing. In that moment of unnatural excitement he saw all his past as a pale eccentricity. He was bitterly ashamed of it. He regretted it with his whole soul, and he resolved to have done with it.
Brushing the fragments of manuscript off on to the floor he sat quickly down at the table. Something within him was trying to think, to reason, but he would not let it. He saw Charmian's eyes, he heard her quick whisper through the applause. She knew for him, as Madame Sennier had known for her husband. Often others know us better than we know ourselves. The true wisdom is to banish the conceit of self, to trust to the instinct of love.