She saw the crowd! And she saw it returning to listen again. And she remembered, with the extraordinary vitality of an ardent woman, who was still little more than a girl, how she had sat opposite to the white-faced, red-haired heroine on the first night of Jacques Sennier's _Paradis Terrestre_; how she had watched her, imaginatively entered into her mind, become one with her. That night Claude had written his letter to her, Charmian. The force in her, had entered into him, had inspired him to do what he did that night, had inspired him to do what he had since done always near to her. And soon, very soon, the white-faced, red-haired woman would be watching her. Then something that was almost like an intoxication of the senses, something that, though it was born in the mind, seemed intimately physical, came upon, rushed over Charmian. It was the intoxication of an acute ambition which believed itself close to fulfilment. Life seemed very wonderful to her. Scarcely could she imagine anything more wonderful than life holding the gift she asked for, the gift something in her demanded. And she connected love with ambition, even with notoriety. She conceived of a satisfied ambition drawing two human beings together, cementing their hearts together, merging their souls in one. "How I shall love Claude triumphant!" she thought exultantly, even passionately, as if she were thinking of a man new made, more lovable by a big measure than he had been before. And she saw love triumphant with wings of flame mounting into the regions of desire, drawing her soul up. "Claude's triumph will develop me," she thought. "Through it I shall become the utmost of which I am capable. I am one of those women who can only thrive in the atmosphere of glory." Claude triumphant, and made triumphant by her! She cherished that imagination. She became possessed by it.