The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded, alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's prospects of becoming a really great power in opera. Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well. The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true. America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries, the tinkling stream voices of the oases. Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew anticipation to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet. The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged. Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to him and gently took him by the arm. "Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?" "I hope so. Your man is a man of value." "Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?" And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed themselves on the critic's face. "I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis." "Bits of the opera?" "One bit. But there was something else that impressed me enormously--almost terrible music."