"I mean I hardly know."
"Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston triumphantly.
Charmian touched the wreath of green leaves which shone in her dark hair. Her face had grown more decisive of late. She looked perhaps more definitely handsome, but she looked just a little bit harder. She glanced at her husband, glanced away, and lit a cigarette. That evening she had again seen Madame Sennier, had noticed, with a woman's almost miraculous sharpness, the crescendo in the Frenchwoman's formerly dominant personality. She puffed out a tiny ring of pale smoke and said nothing. It seemed to her that Alston was doing work for her.
"I don't think it is," Claude said, after a pause. "I'm twenty-nine, and up to now I've never felt impelled to write anything operatic."
"That's probably because you haven't been in the way of meeting managers, opera singers, and conductors. Every man wants the match that fires him."
"That's just what I think," said Charmian.
Claude smiled. In the recent days he had heard so much talk about music and musicians. And he had noticed that Alston and his wife were nearly always in agreement.
"What was the match that fired you, Alston?" he asked, looking at the big lad—he looked little more than a lad—good-naturedly.
"Well, I always wanted to sing, of course. But I think it was Crayford."
He puffed almost furiously at his cigar.