The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself, and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down into the soul of the audience. "Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show it. I am going to hear the sound." With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat violently. "The sound! The sound!" The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard. "They are calling for Claude!" Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible. The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed. But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round, she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs of opera-glasses. Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically. Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up. "Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly. "Gillier! Author! Author!" The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white. Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through the gap, followed by Armand Gillier. Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated, looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone on the stage. Then suddenly came from the audience the sound! It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent Garden on the night of the first performance of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. But essentially it was the same sound.