This was the first step on the way of ambition. And she had caused Claude to take it. Never would he have taken it without her. As she listened to the two men talking, discussing together, trying passages again and again, forgetful for the moment of her, she thrilled with a sense of achieved triumph. Glory seemed already within her grasp. She ran forward in hope, like a child almost. She saw the goal like a thing quite near, almost close to her. "People will love that song! They will love it!" she said to herself. And their love, what might it not do for Claude, and to Claude? Surely it would infect him with the desire for more of that curious heat-giving love of the world for a great talent. Surely it would carry him on, away from the old reserves, from the secrecies which had held him too long, from the darkness in which he had labored. For whom? For himself perhaps, or no one. Surely it would carry him on along the great way to the light that illumined the goal. CHAPTER XVIII At the end of November in that same year the house in Kensington Square was let, the studio in Renwick Place was shut up, and Claude and Charmian were staying in Berkeley Square with Mrs. Mansfield for a couple of nights before their departure for Algiers, where they intended to stay for an indefinite time. They had decided first to go to the Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur, and from there to prosecute their search for a small and quiet villa in which Claude could settle down to work. Most of their luggage was already packed. A case of music, containing a large number of full scores, stood in Mrs. Mansfield's hall. And Charmian was out at the dressmaker's with Susan Fleet, trying on the new gowns she was taking with her to a warmer climate than England's. This vital change in two lives had come about through a song.