Mrs. Mansfield realized that the girl had not enjoyed her evening, but she was too wise to ask her why. Indeed she was not much given to the putting of intimate questions to Charmian. So she changed the subject quietly, and they were soon at home. Twelve o'clock was striking as they entered the house. The evening, Mrs. Mansfield thought, had passed quickly. She was a bad sleeper, and seldom went to bed before one, but she never kept a maid sitting up for her. "I'm going to read a book," she said to Charmian, with her hand on the door of the small library on the first floor, where she usually sat when she was alone. Charmian, taller than she was, bent a little and kissed her. "Wonderful mother!" "What nonsense you talk; but only to me, I know!" "Other people know it without my telling them. You jump into minds and hearts, and poor little I remain outside, squatting like a hungry child." "And that is greater nonsense still. Come and sit up with me for a little." "No, not to-night, you darling!" Almost with violence Charmian kissed her again, released her, and went away up the stairs between white walls to bed. CHAPTER IV Charmian had been right when she had said to herself, "This is the beginning of one of mother's great intimacies." Claude Heath called almost at once in Berkeley Square; and in a short time he established a claim to be one of Mrs. Mansfield's close friends. She had several, but Heath stood out from among them. There was a special bond between the white-haired woman of forty-five and the young man of twenty-eight. Perhaps their freemasonry arose from the fact that each held tenaciously a secret: Mrs. Mansfield her persistent devotion to the memory of her dead husband, Heath his devotion to his art. Perhaps the two secrecies in some mysterious way recognized each other, perhaps the two reserves clung together. These two in silence certainly understood each one something in the other that was hidden from the gaze of the world. A fact in connection with their intimacy, which set it apart from the other friendships of Mrs. Mansfield, was this--Charmian was not included in it. This exclusion was not owing to any desire of the mother. She was incapable of shutting any door, beyond which she did not stand alone, against her child. The generosity of her nature was large, warm, chivalrous, the link between her and Charmian very strong. The girl was wont to accept her mother's friends with a pretty eagerness. They spoiled her, because of her charm, and because she was the child of the house in which they spent some of their happiest hours. Never yet had there lain on Charmian's life a shadow coming from her mother. But now she entered a faintly shadowed way, as it seemed deliberately and of her own will. She tacitly refused to accept the friendship between her mother and Claude Heath as she had accepted the other friendships. Gently, subtly, almost mysteriously, she excluded herself from it.