He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly, ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of megalomania.
Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.
The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes, the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She felt both dull and excited.
"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."
Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to writhe with secret irritation.
"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."
"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since—"
"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."
As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already? She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs. Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected the mysterious region from the banality she had left.
But there she was again carried from mood to mood.