Paul Lane began talking to Charmian when the two handshakes--Heath had shaken hands quickly--were over. She looked across the room, and saw her mother in conversation with the composer. And she knew immediately that he had conceived a strong liking for her mother. It seemed to her in that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in his favor. Perhaps to-night she was in a tiresome mood, as her mother had hinted. As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years, and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested her. Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it. His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut, reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere, combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven. He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother. "Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane. "Not specially so. Music was never mentioned." "Was boxing?" "Boxing!" "Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker." Lane smiled with his mouth. "I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species, but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that it is so." Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed: "You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames say." This time Lane really smiled.