The beauty, the fierce romance of this land, sometimes excited her spirit. Sometimes, with fiery hands, it lulled her into a condition almost of apathy. She listened to the fountain, she looked at the sea which was always blue, and she felt almost as if some part of her nature had fallen away from her, leaving her vague and fragmentary, a Charmian lacking some virtue, or vice, that had formerly been hers and had made her salient. But this apathy did not last long. The sound of Jernington's strangely German voice talking loudly above would disturb it, perhaps, or the noise of chords or passages powerfully struck upon the piano. And immediately the child was with her again, she was busy thinking, planning, hoping, longing, concentrated on the future of the child. She had studied the libretto minutely, had practised reading it aloud. It was of course written in French, and she found a clever woman, retired from a theatrical career in Paris, Madame Thenant, who gave her lessons in elocution, and who finally said that she read the libretto "_assez bien_." This from Madame Thenant, who had played Dowagers at the Comedie Francaise, was a high compliment. Charmian felt that she was ready to make an effect on Jacob Crayford. She was in active correspondence with Alston Lake, who was still in London, and who had had greater success than before. From him she knew that Crayford was in town, and would take his usual "cure" in August at Divonne-les-Bains. Lake had "begun upon him" warily, but had not yet even hinted at the visit to Africa. After his "cure" Crayford proposed making a motor tour. He thought nothing of running all over Europe in his car. Lake was going presently to speak of the perfect surfaces of the Algerian roads, "the best way perhaps of getting him to go to Algeria." He still wanted operas "badly," and had asked after the Heaths directly he arrived in London. Lake had replied that Claude was finishing off an opera. Was he? Where? Alston had evaded the question, giving the impression that Claude wished to remain hidden away. Thereupon Crayford had asked after Charmian, and had been informed that of course she was with her husband. Turtle doves, eh? Crayford had dropped the subject, but had eventually returned to it again in a casual way. Had Lake heard the opera? Some of it. Did it seem any good? Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected, had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the giant hand of one of the great Trusts. Lake's air of mystery had evidently made him suspect that Claude had some reason for keeping away and making a sort of secret of what he was doing. Finally he had inquired point blank whether any one was "after young Heath's opera." Lake could not say anything as to that. "Why don't he write in Europe