The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence. No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had carried him away in the theater. Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had never written that letter of love to Charmian. The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude looked at them, and thought: "If only my letter lay there instead!" CHAPTER XIV It was the end of January in the following year, and Charmian and Claude Heath had been married for three months. The honeymoon was over. The new strangeness of being husband and wife had worn away a little from both of them. Life had been disorganized. Now it had to be rearranged, if possible, be made compact, successful, beautiful. For three months Claude had done no work. Charmian and he had been to Italy for their honeymoon, and had visited, among other places, Milan, Florence, Siena, Perugia, Rome, and Naples. They had not stayed their feet at the Italian lakes. Charmian had said: "Every banal couple who want to pump up a feeling of romance go there. Don't let us join the round-eyed, open-mouthed crowd, and be smirked at by German waiters. I couldn't bear it!" Her horror of being included in the crowd pursued her even to the church door of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. Now she was secretly obsessed by one idea, one great desire. She and Claude must emerge from the crowd with all possible rapidity. The old life of obscurity must be left behind, the new life of celebrity, of fame, be entered upon. Both of them must settle down now to work, Claude to his composition, she to her campaign on his behalf. Of this latter she did not breathe a word to anyone. Her instinct told her to keep her ambition as secret as possible for the present. Later on she would emerge into the open as an English Madame Sennier. But the time for laurel crowns was not yet ripe. All the spade work had yet to be done, with discretion, abnegation, a thousand delicate precautions. She must not be a young wife in a hurry. She must be, or try to be, patient. The little old house near St. Petersburg Place had been got rid of, and Charmian and Claude had just settled in Kensington Square.