He stared at Charmian, and added after a moment of silence:
"And this is the only opera I've found that might help me to do it, though I've searched all Europe. So now you know just where we are. It's a fight, little lady! And it's up to us to be the top dogs at the finish of it."
"And we will be the top dogs!" she exclaimed.
From that moment she regarded Claude as a weapon in the fight which must be won if she were to achieve her great ambition.
CHAPTER XXIX
On a January evening in the following year Claude and Charmian had just finished dinner, and Claude got up, rather slowly and wearily, from the small table which stood in the middle of their handsome red sitting-room on the eighth floor of the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
"How terribly hot this room is!" he said.
"Americans like their rooms hot. But open a little bit of the window, Claudie."
"If I do the noise of Fifth Avenue will come in."