Mr. Crayford did not care very much about the song. A song was not a big proposition, and he was accustomed to think in operas. But his fondness for Lake, and Lake's boyish enthusiasm for Claude, led him to pay some attention to the latter. He was a busy man and did not waste much time. But he was a sharp man and a man on the look-out for talent. Apparently this Claude Heath had some talent, not much developed perhaps as yet. But then he was young. In Claude's appearance and personality there was something arresting. "Looks as if there might be something there," was Crayford's silent comment. And then he admired Charmian and thought her "darned cute." He openly chaffed her on her careful silence about her husband's profession when they had met at Mrs. Shiffney's. "So you wanted to know the great fighter, did you?" he said, pulling at the little beard with a nervous hand, and twitching his eyebrows. "And if he hadn't happened to have one opera house, and to be thinking about running up another, much you'd have cared about his fighting." "My husband is not a composer of operas, Mr. Crayford," observed Charmian demurely. From Alston Lake had come the urgent advice to Claude to try his hand on an opera. Jacques Sennier and his wife, fresh from their triumphs in America, had come to London again in June. The _Paradis Terrestre_ had been revived at Covent Garden, and its success had been even greater than before. "Claude, you've simply got to write an opera!" Lake had said one night in his studio. Charmian, Claude, and he had all been at Covent Garden that night, and had dropped in, as they sometimes did, at the studio to spend an hour on their way home. Lake loved the studio, and if there were any question of his going either there or to the house in Kensington, he always "plumped for the studio." They "sat around" now, eating sandwiches and drinking lemonade and whisky-and-soda, and discussing the events of the evening. "I couldn't possibly write an opera," Claude said. "Why not?" "I have no bent toward the theater." Alston Lake, who was long-limbed, very blond, clean-shaved, with gray eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the cigar-box, and glanced at Charmian. "What is your bent toward?" he said, in his strong and ringing baritone voice. Claude's forehead puckered, and the sudden distressed look, which Mrs. Mansfield had sometimes noticed, came into his eyes. "Well--" he began, in a hesitating voice. "I hardly know--now." "Now, old chap?" "I mean I hardly know." "Then for all you can tell it may be toward opera?" said Alston triumphantly.