After a moment she added, with a touch of irritation:
"He"s evidently very difficile for an unknown man."
"No, it isn"t that at all. If you ever know him well, you will understand."
"What?" she asked with petulance.
"That his reserve is a right instinct, nothing more. Between ourselves,"
he bent toward her, "I made a little mistake in asking Mrs. Shiffney, delightful though she is."
"I wondered why you had asked her, when you didn"t want even to ask me."
"Middle-aged as I am, I get carried away by people. I met Mrs. Shiffney to-day at a concert. She was so absolutely right in her enthusiasm, so clever and artistic--though she"s ignorant of music--over the whole thing, that--well, here she is."
"And here I am!"
"Yes, here you are!" he said genially.
He had been standing. Now he sat down beside her, crossed one leg over the other, held his knee with his clasped hands, and continued:
"The worst of it is Mrs. Shiffney has made him bolt several doors. When she looked at him I could see at once that she made him feel transparent."
"Poor thing! Tell me, do you enjoy very much protecting all the sensitive artistic temperaments that come into this room? Do you enjoy arranging the cotton-wool wadding so that there may be no chance of a nasty jar, to say nothing of a breakage?"
He pursed his rather thick lips, that smiled so easily.
"When the treasure is a treasure, genuinely valuable, I don"t mind it. I feel then that I am doing worthy service."
"You really are a dear, you know!" she said, with a sudden change, a melting. "It was good of you to ask me, when you didn"t want to."
She leaned a little toward him, with one light hand palm downward on the cushion of the sofa, and her small, rather square chin thrust forward in a way that made her look suddenly intense.
"I"ll try not to be like Mrs. Shiffney. I"ll try not to make him feel transparent."
"I"m not sure that you could," he said, smiling at her.
"How horrid of you to doubt my powers! Why, why will n.o.body believe I have anything in me?"
She brought the words out with a force that was almost vicious. As she said them it happened that Claude Heath turned a little. His eyes travelled down the room and met hers. Perhaps her mother had just been speaking to him of her, had been making some a.s.sertion about her. For he seemed to look at her with inquiry.
When Charmian turned away her eyes from his she added to Max Elliot:
"But what does it matter? Because people, some people, can"t see a thing, that doesn"t prove that it has no existence. And I don"t really care what people think of me."
"This--to your old friend!"
"Yes. And besides, I expect one must possess to discover."
Her voice was almost complacent.
"You deal in enigmas to-night."
"One ought to carry a light when one goes into a cave to seek for gold."
But Elliot would not let her see that he had from the first fully understood her impertinence.
"Let us go back to the fire," he said. "Unless you are really afraid of the heat. Let us hear what your mother and Heath are talking about."
"I"m not afraid of anything except a Te Deum."
"There"s Mrs. Shiffney speaking to him. I don"t think we shall have it to-night."
"Then I"ll venture to draw near," said Charmian, again a.s.suming a semblance of awe.
The minx was evidently uppermost in her as they approached the others.
She walked with a dainty slowness, a composed consciousness, that were almost the least bit affected, and as she stood still for a minute close to her mother, with her long eyes half shut, she looked typically of the world worldly, languid, almost prettily disdainful.
Mrs. Shiffney was speaking of the concert of that afternoon with discrimination and with enthusiasm.
"Of course he"s a little monkey," she concluded, evidently alluding to some artist. "But _what_ a little monkey! I was in the front row, and he called my attention to everything he was going to do, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in dreadful French, or in English that was really a criminal offense, and very often with his right elbow. He has a way of nudging the air in one"s direction so that one feels it in one"s side.
Animal magnetism, I suppose. And he begs for sympathy as if it were a biscuit. Do you know him, Mr. Heath?"
"No, not at all. I know very few big artists."
"But all the young coming ones, I suppose? Did you study abroad?"
"I went to the Royal College at Kensington Gore."
Mrs. Shiffney, who was very cosmopolitan, had a flat in Paris, and was more often out of England than in it, slightly raised her eyebrows.
"You haven"t studied in France or Germany?"
Heath began to look rather uncomfortable, and slightly self-conscious.
"No," he said quickly.
He paused, then as if with a decided effort he added:
"I think the training a student gets at the Royal College is splendid."
"Of course it is," said Max Elliot, heartily.
Mrs. Shiffney shook her shoulders.
"I"m sure it"s quite perfect," she said, in her rather deep voice, gazing at the young composer with eyes in which a light satire twinkled.
"Don"t think I"m criticizing it. Only I"m so dreadfully un-English, and I think English musicians get rather into a groove. The Hallelujah bow-wow, you know!"
At this point in the conversation Charmian tranquilly interposed.