His face was burning. He was perspiring. He was longing to break out of the room, out of the villa, to rush away—away into some desert place, and to be alone.
"Who says such things? No; but you look it, you look it."
"I can't help—how would you have me look?"
"Now, my boy, don't get angry!"
"Claudie, we all only want—"
"I know—I know!"
He clenched his wet hands.
"Well, tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
"That's talking!" cried Crayford. "Now, from this moment we know what we're up against. And I'll tell you what. Sitting here as we are, in this one-horse heat next door but one to Hell—don't mind me, little lady! I'll stop right there!—we're getting on to something that's going to astonish the world. I know what I'm talking about—'s going to astonish—the—world! And now we'll start right in to hit the center!"
And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success.