Mr. Crayford was small, thin, and wiry-looking, with large keen brown eyes, brown and gray hair, growing over a well-formed and artistic head which was slightly protuberant at the back, and rather large, determined features. At a first glance he looked "Napoleonic." Perhaps this was intentional on his part. His skin was brown, and appeared to be unusually dry. He wore the tiny beard noticed by Charmian, and a carefully trained and sweeping moustache. His ears slightly suggested a faun. His hands were nervous, and showed energy, and the tendency to grasp and to hold. His voice was a thin tenor, with occasional, rather surprisingly deep chest notes, when he wished to be specially emphatic. His smart, well-cut clothes, and big emerald shirt stud, and sleeve links, suggested the successful impresario. His manner was, on a first introduction, decidedly business-like, cool, and watchful. But in his eyes there were sometimes intense flashes which betokened a strong imagination, a temperament capable of emotion and excitement. His eyelids were large and rounded. And on the left one there was a little brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to be alertly on the defensive if he judged defense to be necessary. "I've heard so much of your battles, Mr. Crayford," she said, "that I wanted to know the great fighter." She had assumed her very self-possessed manner, the minx-manner as some people called it. Claude had known it well in the "early days." It gave her a certain very modern charm in the eyes of some men. And it suggested a woman who lived in and for the world, who had nothing to do with any work. There was daintiness in it, and a hint of impertinence. Mr. Crayford smiled faintly. He had a slight tic, moving his eyebrows sometimes suddenly upward. "A good set-to now and then does no one any harm that I know of," he said, speaking rapidly. "They say over here you've got the worst of it this season." "Do they indeed? Very kind and obliging of them, I'm sure." "I hope it isn't true." "Are you an enemy of the great and only Jacques then?" said Mr. Crayford. "Monsieur Sennier? Oh, no! I was at the first performance of his _Paradis Terrestre_, and it altered my whole life." "Well, they like it over in New York. And I've got to find another Paradise to put up against it just as quick as I know how." "I do hope you'll be successful." "I'll put Europe through my sieve anyway," said Mr. Crayford. "No man can do more. And very few men know the way to do as much. Are you interested in music?" "Intensely." She paused, looking at the little man before her. She was hesitating whether to tell him that she had married a musician or to refrain. Something told her to refrain, and she added: "I've always lived among musical people and heard the best of everything."