"Yes, Charmian, of course I remember."
Claude strove with all his might to speak warmly, impetuously, to get back somehow the warmth, the impulse that had driven him to write that letter. But he remembered, too, his terrible desire to get that letter back out of the box. And he felt guilty. He was glad just then that Charmian had turned out those two burners.
"In these months I think we seem to have got away from that letter, from that night."
Claude became cold. Dread overtook him. Had she detected his lack of love? Was she going to tax him with it?
"Oh, surely not! But how do you mean?" he broke in anxiously. "That was a special night. We were all on fire. One cannot always live at that high pressure. If we could we should wear ourselves out."
"Yes, perhaps. But geniuses do live at high pressure. And you are a genius."
At that moment the peculiar sense of being less than the average man, which is characteristic of greatly talented men in their periods of melancholy and reaction, was alive in Claude. Charmian's words intensified it.
"If you reckon on having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he said, with a bluntness not usual in him.
"It isn't that!" she said quickly, almost sharply. "But I can't forget things Max Elliot has said about you—long ago. And Madre thinks—I know that, though she doesn't say anything. And, besides, I have heard some of your things."
"And what did you really think of them?" he asked abruptly.