"Look at Alston!" he would say. "Where would he be now if I hadn't got hold of his talent? In Wall Street eating his heart out. I met him, and I'll make him another Battistini. See here"--and he turned sharply to Claude--"I'll bring him out in your opera. That baritone part could easily be worked up a bit, brought forward more into the limelight. Why, it would strengthen the opera, give it more backbone. Mind you, I wouldn't spoil the score not for all the Alstons ever created. Art comes first with me, and they know it from Central Park to San Francisco. But the baritone part would bear strengthening. It's for the good of the opera." That phrase "for the good of the opera" was ever on his lips. Claude rose up and went to bed with it ringing in his ears. It seemed that he, the composer, knew little or nothing about his own work. The sense of form was leaving him. Once the work had seemed to him to have a definite shape; now, when he considered it, it seemed to have no shape at all. But Crayford and Charmian and Alston Lake declared that it was twice as strong, twice as remarkable, as it had been before Crayford took it in hand. "He's a genius in his own way!" Lake swore. Claude was tempted to reply: "No doubt. But he's not a genius in my way." But he refrained. What would be the use? And Charmian agreed with Alston. She and Crayford were the closest, the dearest of friends. He admired not only her appearance, which pleased her, but her capacities, which delighted her. "She's no rester!" he would say emphatically. "Works all the time. Never met an Englishwoman like her!" Charmian almost loved him for the words. At last someone, and a big man, recognized her for what she was. She had never been properly appreciated before. Triumph burned within her, and fired her ambitions anew. She felt almost as if she were a creator. "If Madre only knew," she thought. "She has never quite understood me." While Claude was working on the new alterations and developments devised by Crayford--and he worked like a slave driven on by the expectations of those about him, scourged to his work by their desires--Lake studied the baritone part in the opera with enthusiasm, and Crayford and Charmian "put their heads together" over the scenery and the "effects." "We must have it all cut and dried before I sail," said Crayford. "And I can't stay much longer; ought really have been back home along by now." "Let me help you! I'll do anything!" she cried. "And, by Gee! I believe you could if you set your mind to it," he answered. "Now, see here--" They plunged deep into the libretto. Crayford was resolved to astonish New York with his production of the opera. "We'll have everything real," he said. "We'll begin with real Arabs. I'll have no fake-niggers; nothing of that kind." That Arabs are not niggers did not trouble him at all. He and Charmian went down together repeatedly into the city, interviewed all sorts of odd people.