Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was he?
Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason, which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with anger.
"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and not with me."
And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man—the intentness of the heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out landmarks.
The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well. Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr. Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation. Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.
"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon, at whose feet he was laying his homage.
Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.
She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.
"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must come!"