"I don't know whether she will want me," said Susan. "But at any rate I shall be there for the first night."
"Ah—the first night!" said Charmian.
Again she changed. With the thought of the coming epoch in her life and Claude's her vexation died.
"It's coming so near!" she said. "There are moments when I want to rush toward it, and others when I wish it were far away. It's terrible when so much hangs on one night, just three or four hours of time. One does need courage in art. But Claude has found it. Yes, Susan, you are right. Claude is finer than I am. He is beginning to dominate me here, as he never dominated me before. If he triumphs—and he will, he shall triumph!—I believe I shall be quite at his feet."
She laughed, but tears were not far from her eyes. This period she was passing through in New York was tearing at her nerves with teeth and claws although she scarcely knew it.
Susan, who had seen clearly the hurt she had inflicted, moved, came nearer to Charmian, and gently took one of her hands.
"My dear," she said. "Does it matter so much which it is?"
"Matter! Of course it does. Everything hangs upon it—for us, I mean, of course. We have given up everything for the opera, altered our lives. It is to be the beginning of everything for us."
Susan looked steadily at Charmian with her ugly, beautiful eyes.
"Perhaps it might be that in either case," she said. "Dear Charmian, I think preaching is rather odious. I hope I don't often step into the pulpit. But we've talked of many things, of things I care for and believe in. May I tell you something I think with the whole of my mind, and even more than that as it seems to me?"