Claude Heath was in the room with Mrs. Mansfield. As Charmian looked at him getting quickly up from the sofa where he had been sitting he seemed to her a stranger. Was this really the man who had made her suffer, weep, confide in Susan Fleet, in Algeria? Had pink roses and dust, far-off and near sounds, movements and stillnesses, and that strange little island spoken to her of him, prophesied to her about him? She had a sense of banality, of disillusion, as if all that had been in her own brain only, almost crazily conceived without any action of events to prompt it. But when she met his eyes the disagreeable sensation dropped away. For his eyes searched her in a way that made her feel suddenly important. He was looking for Africa, but she did not know it. Although he did not see what Charmian had done to her face, he noticed change in her. She seemed to him more of a personage than she had seemed before she went away. He was not sure that he liked the change. But it made an impression upon him. And what he considered as the weakness within him felt a desire to please and conciliate it. Mrs. Mansfield had seen at a glance that Charmian had touched up her face, but she showed nothing of what she felt, if she felt anything, about this new departure. And when Heath said to Charmian, "How well you are looking!" Mrs. Mansfield added: "Your rest has done you good." "Yes, I feel rather less idiotic!" said Charmian; "but only rather. You mustn't expect me to be quite my usual brilliant self, Mr. Heath. You must wait a day or two for that. What have you been doing all this time?" It seemed to Heath that there was a hint of light patronage in her tone and manner. He was unpleasantly conscious of the woman of the world. But he did not realize how much Charmian had to conceal at this moment.