"Practically the whole of the music is composed, I believe. It's the orchestration that takes such a lot of time."
"Well, and how far has that got? Claude's never told me plump out. Composers never do. And I know better than to pump them. It's fatal—that! They simply can't stand it."
"I know. I believe the opera might be ready by the end of this year."
"Not before then?"
They looked at each other, then Charmian said:
"Oh, Alston, if you only knew how difficult it is to me to wait—to wait and not to show any impatience to him. Sometimes—well, now and then, I've shut myself in and cried with impatience, cried angrily. I've wanted to bite things. One day I actually did bite a pillow."
She laughed, but her cheeks were flushed.
"It's the perpetual keeping it in that is such a torment. I know how wicked it would be to hurry him. And he does work so hard. And I've heard of people taking ten years over an opera. Claude only began about a year and five months ago. He's been marvellously quick, really. But, oh, sometimes I feel as if this suppressed impatience were making me ill, physically and mentally, as if it were a kind of poison stealing all through me! Can you understand?"
"Can I? You bet! I only wish the thing could be ready before Crayford goes back to the States."
"When does he go?"