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When he was gone, when his extraordinary personality was withdrawn, Charmian's painful preoccupation returned. She had sent Claude away because she did not wish Adelaide Shiffney to meet him. It had been an instinctive action, not preceded by any train of reasoning. Adelaide was coming out of curiosity. Therefore her curiosity should not be gratified.
Naturally it had been assumed that he would not waste his time over a thing in which he did not think of having a money interest. But he had been careful not to commit himself to any exact statement which could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude dumb, despite that rage of contempt.
Pyrrhus brought from the city an altar and a marble statue of Ilythyia, the Goddess of Birth, called by the Romans Lucina, which his friend Anukis had given him, in Charmian's name, for the young wife.
"What is it?" "Look!" she whispered, pointing, "there where it is darkest look!" Now, following the direction of her finger, I saw something that skulked amid the shadows something that slunk away, and vanished as I watched. "A man!" I exclaimed, and would have started in pursuit, but Charmian's hands were upon my arm, strong and compelling.
And we did very nicely, thank you, especially after the first hour or so, during which time the Outlaw had kicked about fifty various times, chiefly to the damage of her own legs and the paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred times, to the damage of Maid's neck and Charmian's temper.
The pen slipped from Charmian's fingers to the floor, and before I could pick it up she had forestalled me, so that when she raised her head she was flushed with stooping. "Have you ever seen this lady, Peter?" "Never, but I have heard of her who has not?" "What have you heard?" "That she galloped her horse up and down the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, for one thing." "What more?"
"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment. "No, it isn't." "Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled. "It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday." Charmian put her chin in her hand. "How did you know what I thought?"
She knew that the artist Leonax, Barine's father, had been Charmian's lover; but this did not justify her favouring the woman who had robbed her niece of the heart of the man whom she as Charmian knew had loved from childhood.
Ludlow himself praised it; he said he felt at home in it, and he liked it because it was not carried a bit too far. Charmian's mother had left her free to do what she wished, and there was not a convention of Philistine housekeeping in the arrangement of the place. Everything was in the admired disorder of an artist's environment; but Mrs. Maybough insisted upon neatness.
When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds. They were much larger than ours on the Snark. But ours are young yet, and haven't had a chance to grow. Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long. We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian's bunk.
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