Another person on whom she had secretly set high hopes was Adelaide Shiffney. It was for this reason that she had been irritated at Mrs. Shiffney's defection on the night of the house-warming. Now that she was married to a composer Charmian understood the full value of Mrs. Shiffney's influence in the fashionable world. She must get Adelaide on their side. But here again Sennier stood in her path. Mrs. Shiffney was, musically speaking of course, in love with Jacques Sennier. Since Wagner there had been nobody to play upon feminine nerves as the little Frenchman played, to take women "out of themselves." As a well-known society woman said, with almost pathetic frankness, "When one hears Sennier's music one wants to hold hands with somebody." Apparently Mrs. Shiffney wanted to hold hands with the composer himself. She had "no use" at the moment for anyone else, and had already arranged to take the Senniers on a yachting cruise after the London season, beginning with Cowes. The "feelers" which Charmian put out found the atmosphere rather chilly. But she remembered what battles with the world most of its great men have had to fight, how many wives of great men have had to keep the flame alive in gross darkness. She was not daunted. But she presently began to feel that, without being frank with Claude, she must try to get a certain amount of active help from him. She had intended by judicious talk to create the impression that Claude was an extraordinary man, on the way to accomplish great things. She believed this thoroughly herself. But she now realized that, owing to the absurd Sennier "boom," unless she could get Claude to show publicly something of his talent nobody would pay any attention to what she said. "What is he doing?" people asked, when she spoke about his long hours of work, about the precautions she had to take lest he should be disturbed. She answered evasively. The truth was that she did not know what Claude was doing. What he had done, or some of it, she did know. She had heard his Te Deum, and some of his strange settings of words from the scriptures. But her clever worldly instinct told her that this was not the time when her set would be likely to appreciate things of that kind. The whole trend of the taste she cared about was setting in the direction of opera. And whenever she tried to find out from Claude what he was composing in Kensington Square she was met with evasive answers. One afternoon she came home from a party at the Drakes' house in Park Lane determined to enlist Claude's aid at once in her enterprise, without telling him what was in her heart. And first she must find out definitely what sort of composition he was working on at the present moment. In Park Lane nothing had been heard of but Sennier and Madame Sennier. Margot had returned from America more enthusiastic, more _engouee_ than ever.