He was an old friend of Adelaide, and was devoted to the Senniers and to their cause. But he did not quite like this expedition. He realized that these charming women, whom he was escorting to a barbaric city, were driven by curiosity, and that in their curiosity there was something secretly hostile. He wished they had stayed at Mustapha, and had decided to leave Claude Heath alone with his violent librettist. Elliot greatly disliked the active hostility to artists often shown by the partisans of other artists. There was no question, of course, of any rivalry between Heath, an almost unknown man, and Sennier, a man now of world-wide fame. Yet these two women were certainly on the qui vive. It was very absurd, he thought. But it was also rather disagreeable to him. He began to wish that Henriette were not so almost viciously determined to keep the path clear for her husband. The wife of a little man might well be afraid of every possible rival. But Sennier was not a little man. Elliot did not understand either the nature of Henriette's heart or the nature of her mind. Nor did he know her origin. In fact, he knew very little about her. She was just fifty, and had been for a time a governess in a merchant's family in Marseilles. This occupation she had quitted with an abruptness that had not been intentional. In fact, she had been turned out. Afterward she had remained in Marseilles, but not as a governess. Finally she had married Jacques Sennier. She was low-born, but had been very well educated, and was naturally clever. Her cleverness had throughout her life instinctively sought an outlet in intrigue. Some women intrigue when circumstances drive them to subterfuge, trickery and underhand dealing. Henriette Sennier needed no incentive of that kind. She liked intrigue for its own sake. In Marseilles she had lived in the midst of a network of double dealing connected with so-called love. When she married Jacques Sennier she had exchanged it for intrigue connected with art. She was by nature suspicious and inquisitive, generally unable to trust because she was untrustworthy. But her devotion to her Jacques was sincere and concentrated. It helped to make her cruel, but it helped to make her strong. She was incapable of betraying Jacques, but she was capable of betraying everyone for Jacques. Without the slightest uneasiness she had left him alone at Mustapha. He was the only person she trusted--for a week. She meant to be back at Mustapha within a week. After their "Hush!" she and Mrs. Shiffney decided not to talk any more. "It makes my throat ache shouting up against the roof," said Mrs. Shiffney. She had, how or why she scarcely knew, come to occupy an upper berth for the first time in her life. She resented this. And she resented it still more when Madame Sennier replied: "I wanted you to choose the lower bed, but I thought you preferred being where you are."