And from that moment they started in. Once Claude had given way he made no further resistance. He talked, discussed, tried sometimes, rather feebly, to put forward his views. But he was letting himself go with the tide, and he knew it. He secretly despised himself. Yet there were moments when he was carried away by a sort of spurious enthusiasm, when the desire for fame, for wide success, glowed in him; not at all as it glowed in Charmian, yet with a warmth that cheered him. Out of this opera, now that it was being "made over" by Jacob Crayford, with his own consent, he desired only the one thing, popular success. It was not his own child. And in art he did not know how to share. He could only be really enthusiastic, enthusiastic in the soul of him, when the thing he had created was his alone. So now, leaving aside all question of that narrow but profound success, which repays every man who does exactly what the best part of him has willed to do, Claude strove to fasten all his desire on a wide and perhaps shallow success. And sometimes he was able, helped by the enthusiasm--a genuine enthusiasm--of his three companions, to be almost gay and hopeful, to be carried on by their hopes. As his enthusiasm of the soul died Jacob Crayford's was born; for where Claude lost he gained. He was now assisting to make an opera; with every day his fondness for the work increased. Although he could be hard and business-like, he could also be affectionate and eager. Now that Claude had given in to him he became almost paternal. He was a sort of "Padre eterno" in Djenan-el-Maqui, and he thoroughly enjoyed his position. The more he did to the opera, in the way of suggestion of effects and interpolations, re-arrangement and transposition of scenes, cuttings out and writings in, the more firmly did he believe in it. "Put in that march and it wakes the whole thing up," he would say; or "that quarrelling scene with the Spahis"--thought of by himself--"makes your opera a different thing." And then his whole forehead would twitch, his eyes would flash, and he would pull the little beard till Charmian almost feared he would pull it off. He had returned to his obsession about the young. Frequently he reiterated with fervor that his chief pleasure in the power he wielded came from the fact that it enabled him to help the careers of young people.