At this point a third voice intervened in the dialogue. It was Charmian's, reduced to a sort of intense whisper. It said:
"Alice! Alice! I specially told you not to make a sound in the house. Your master is at work. The least noise disturbs him. Pray be quiet. If you must speak, go downstairs."
There was silence, then the sound of rustling, of a door shutting, then again silence.
Claude came away from the fire.
"Your master is at work."
He dashed down his hands on the big writing-table, with a gesture almost of despair. Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her lap. And he ground his teeth.
"I can't—I can't—I never shall be able to!"
He leaned his elbows on the writing-table and put his head in his hands. When he looked up, after some minutes, he met Charmian's half-closed, photographed eyes.
Between twelve and one o'clock the noise of a piano organ playing vigorously, almost angrily, "You are Queen of my heart to-night," came up to him from the square, softened, yet scarcely ameliorated, by distance and intervening walls. With bold impertinence it began, continued for perhaps three minutes, then abruptly ceased in the middle of a phrase.
Claude knew why. One of the four maids, incited thereto by Charmian, had rushed out to control the swarthy Italian who was earning his living in the land without light.