"But I don't need--I mean, I could never consent--"

She made a face at him, drawing down her brows, and turning her eyes to the left where the caretaker stood, with a bunch of keys in his large, gouty, red hands. Claude said no more. As they went out Charmian smiled at the caretaker.

"We are going to take it. My husband likes it."

"Yes, ma'am. It's a mighty fine studio. The Baron was sorry to leave it, but he had to go back to Vi-henner."

"I see."

"Now the next thing is to furnish it," said Charmian, as they walked away.

"I shall only want my piano, a chair, and a table," said Claude.

It was only by making a very great effort that he was able to speak naturally, with any simplicity.

"Besides," he added quickly, "it's really too expensive. A hundred a year is absurd."

"If it were two hundred a year it wouldn't be a penny too much if you really like it, if you will feel happy and at home in it. I'm going to furnish it for you, quite simply, of course. Just rugs and a divan or two, and a screen to shut out the door, two or three pretty comfortable chairs, some draperies--only thin ones, nothing heavy to spoil the acoustics--a few cushions, a table or two. Oh, and you must have a spirit-lamp, a little _batterie de cuisine_, and perhaps a tea-basket."

"But, my dear Charmian--"

"Hush, old boy! You have genius, but you don't understand these things.

These are the woman's things. I shall love getting together everything.

Surely you don't want to spoil my little fun. I've made a failure of your workroom in Kensington. Do let me try to make a success of the studio."

What could Claude do but thank her, but let her have her way?

The studio was taken for three years and furnished. For days Charmian talked and thought of little else. She was prompted, carried on, by two desires--one, that Claude should be able to work hard as soon as possible; the other, that people should realize what an energetic, capable, and enthusiastic woman she was. The Madame Sennier spirit attended her in her goings out and her comings in, armed her with energy, with gaiety, with patience.

When at length all was ready, she said:

"Claude, to-morrow I want you to do something for me."

"What is it? Of course I will do it. You've been so good, giving up everything for the studio."

Charmian had really given up several parties, and explained why she could not go to them to inquiring hostesses of the "set."

"I want you to let us _pendre la cremaillere_ to-morrow evening all alone, just you and I together."

"In the studio?"

"Of course."

"Well, but"--he smiled, then laughed rather awkwardly--"but what could we do there all alone? What is there to do? And, besides, there's that party at Mrs. Shiffney's to-morrow night. We were both going to that."

"We could go there afterward if we felt inclined. But--I don't know that I want to go to Adelaide Shiffney just now."

"But why not?"

"Perhaps--only perhaps, remember--I'll tell you to-morrow night in the studio."

She a.s.sumed in the last words that the matter was settled, and Claude raised no further objection. He saw she was set upon the carrying out of her plan. There was will in her long eyes. He could not help fancying that either she had some surprise in store for him, or that she meant to do, or say, something extremely definite, which she had already decided upon in her mind, to-morrow in the studio.

He felt slightly uneasy.

On the following morning Charmian looked distinctly mysterious, and rather as if she wished Claude to notice her mystery. He ignored it, however, though he realized that some plan must be maturing in her head.

His suspicion of the day before was certainly well founded.

"What about this evening, Charmian?" he asked.

"Oh, we are going to _pendre la cremaillere_. You remember we decided yesterday."

"Before or after dinner? And what about Mrs. Shiffney?"

"Well, I thought we might go to the studio about half-past seven or eight. Could you meet me there--say at half-past seven?"

"Meet you?"

"Yes; I've got to go out in that direction and could take it on the way home."

"All right. But dinner? That's just at dinner-time--not that I care."

"We could have something when we get home. I can tell Alice to put something in the dining-room for us. There's that pie, and we can have a bottle of champagne to drink success to the studio, if we want it."

"And Mrs. Shiffney's given up?"

"We can see how we feel. She only asked us for eleven. We can easily dress and go, it we want to."

So it was settled.

As Claude had not yet begun to work he took a long and solitary walk in the afternoon. He made his way to Battersea Park, and spent nearly two hours there. That day he felt as if a crisis, perhaps small but very definite, had arisen in his life. For some five months now he had been inactive. He had lost the long habit of work. He had allowed his life to be disorganized. No longer had he a grip on himself and on life. From to-morrow he must get that grip again. In the isolation of the studio he would surely be able to get it. Yet he felt very doubtful. He did not know what he wanted to do. He seemed to have drifted very far away from the days when his talent, or his genius, spoke with no uncertain voice, dictated to him what he must do. In those days he was seldom in doubt.

He did not have to search. There was no vagueness in his life. The Bible, that inexhaustible mine of great literature, prompted him to music. But, then, he was living in comparative solitude. Quiet days stretched before him, empty evenings. He could give himself up to what was within him. Even now he could have quiet days. He had recently pa.s.sed not a few with the _French Revolution_. But the evenings of course were not, could not be, empty. He often went out with Charmian.

He was beginning to know something of the society in which she had always lived. There were many pleasant, some charming, people in it. He found a certain enjoyment in the little dinners, the theater parties, even in the few receptions he had been to. But he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that, when in this society, he disliked the fact that he was an unknown man. This society did not give him the incentive to do anything great. On the other hand it made him dislike being--or was it only seeming?--small. Charmian's att.i.tude, too, had often rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he were closely connected with it, though he had not quite understood how.

All this now rose up, seemed to spread out before his mind as he walked in Battersea Park. And he said to himself, "It can't go on. I simply must get to work on something. I must get a grip on myself and my life again." He remembered the heat of his soul after he had heard Jacques Sennier's opera, the pa.s.sion almost to do something great that had glowed in him, the longing for fame. Then he had said to himself: "My life shall feed my art. I'll live, and by living I'll achieve." Out of that heat no rare flower had arisen. He had come out into the world. He had married Charmian, had travelled in Italy. And that was all.

That day he was angry with himself, was sick of his idle life. But he did not feel within him the strong certainty that he would be able to take his life in hand and transform it, which drives doubt and sorrow out of a man. He kept on saying, "I must!" But he did not say, "I shall!"

The fact was that the mainspring was missing from the watch. Claude was living as if he loved, but he was not loving.

At half-past seven he pa.s.sed up the handsome steps and under the arch which led to his studio.

The caretaker with gouty hands met him. This man had been a soldier, and still had a soldier's eyes, and a way of presenting himself, rather sternly and watchfully, to those arriving in "my building," as he called the house full of studios, which was military. But gout, and it is to be feared drink, had long ago made him physically flaccid, and mentally rather sulky and vague. He looked a wreck, and as if he guessed that he was a wreck. An artist on the first floor had labelled him, "The derelict looking for tips to the offing."

"The lady's here, sir," he observed, on seeing Claude.

"Is she?"

"Been 'ere"--he sometimes dropped an aitch and sometimes did not--"this half hour."