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"That isn't Jimmy's line" was their restraining thought if they had for a moment contemplated suggesting to Mr. Shiffney that he might perhaps put himself out for a friend. And Jimmy was quite of their opinion, and always stuck to his "line," like a sensible fellow. Two or three days after Mrs. Shiffney's visit to Claude Heath her husband, late one afternoon, found her in tears.
The coldness and the dreaminess were gone now, but her excitement was mingled with a great uncertainty. On receiving Mrs. Shiffney's note Charmian had almost instantly understood why she had been asked on the cruise. Her instinct had told her, for she had at that time known nothing of Heath's refusal. She had supposed that he had not yet been invited. Mrs.
"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours." "To yours!" "Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis. Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs. Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer softly.
Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
Shiffney had more money than she knew how to spend, although she was recklessly extravagant. Her mother, who was dead, had been an Austrian Jewess, and from her had come the greater part of Mrs. Shiffney's large personal fortune. Her father, Sir Willy Manning, was still alive, and was a highly cultivated and intelligent Englishman of the cosmopolitan type; Mrs.
Shiffney's usual apparently careless abruptness. In the afternoon, after a little talk with Henriette in the garden of the St. George, she had called the composer and Max Elliot on to the big terrace, and had said: "I feel dull. Nothing special to do here, is there? Let's all run away to Biskra. We can take Timgad and all the rest on the way."
Now and then a corner of the covering slipped down, leaving a surface exposed, which, to Claude, seemed ugly. To-day at this moment she seemed unable to mask entirely some angry feeling which possessed her. How different she was from Mrs. Shiffney! Claude had enjoyed Mrs. Shiffney's visit.
Shiffney's remarks about Continental artists stuck in his mind. Ought he not to fling off his armor, to descend boldly into the mid-stream of life, to let it take him on its current whither it would? He was conscious that if once he abandoned his cautious existence he might respond to many calls which, as yet, had not appealed to him.
He took Mrs. Shiffney's hand. Its clasp now told him nothing. They crossed the bridge and came once more into the violent activities, into the perpetual uproar of the city. By the evening train Mrs. Shiffney and her party left for Algiers. Claude went down to the station to see them off. On the platform they found Armand Gillier, with a bunch of flowers in his hand.
The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped again. "I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
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