"He never will." "Why not? Covent Garden took Sennier's opera." "I'm not a Sennier unfortunately." "What a pity it is you have not more belief in yourself!" she exclaimed, almost angrily. She felt at that moment as if his lack of self-confidence might ruin their prospects. "O Claude," she continued in the same almost angry voice, "do pluck up a little belief in your own talent, otherwise how can--" She pulled herself up sharply. "I can't help being angry," she continued. "I believe in you so much, and then you speak like this." Suddenly she burst into tears. Her depression culminated in this breakdown, which surprised her as much as it astonished Claude. "My nerves have been on edge all day," she said, or, rather, sobbed. "I don't know why." But even as she spoke she did know why. The strain of secret ambition was beginning to tell upon her. She was perpetually hiding something, was perpetually waiting, desiring, thinking, "How much longer?" And she had not Susan Fleet's wonderful serenity. And then she could not forget Claude's remark, "I can't keep away from the opera." It ought to have pleased her, perhaps, but it had wounded her. "I'm a fool!" she said, wiping her eyes. "I'm strung up; not myself." Claude put his arm round her gently. "I understand that my attitude about my work must often be very aggravating," he said. "But--" He stopped, said nothing more. "Let us believe in the opera," she exclaimed--"your own child. Then others will believe in it, too. Alston does." She looked up at him with the tears still shining in her eyes. "And Jacob Crayford shall." After a moment she added: "If only you leave him to me and don't spoil things." "How could I spoil my own music?" he asked. But she only answered: "Oh, Claude, there are things you don't understand!" CHAPTER XXVIII "So the darned rester's come back, has he?" Crayford was the speaker. Dressed in a very thin suit, with a yellow linen coat on his arm, a pair of goggles in one hand, and a huge silver cigar-case, "suitably inscribed," in the other, he had just come into the smoking-room of the Excelsior Hotel. "They gave you the note, then?" said Alston. "Yaw." Crayford laid the coat down, opened the cigar-case, and took out a huge Havana. "I guess we'll let the car wait a bit, Alston," he said, lighting up. "Of course she telegraphed him to come." "I'm quite sure she didn't," said Alston emphatically. "Think I can't see?" observed Crayford drily. He sat down and crossed his legs. "No. But even you can't see what isn't." "There's not much that is this eye don't light on. The little lady up at Djen-anne-whatever you may call it is following up a spoor; and I'm the big game at the end of it. She's out to bring me down, my boy. Well, that's all right, only don't you two take me for too much of an innocent little thing, that's all." Alston said nothing, and maintained a cheerful and imperturbable expression.