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Say I am here, waiting to speak to her. Go at once, Frank for my sake!" There is no alternative but to obey her. His eyes drink a last draught of her beauty. He hurries away on his errand the happiest man in the room. Five minutes since she was only his partner in the dance. He has spoken and she has pledged herself to be his partner for life! It was not easy to find Mrs. Crayford in the crowd.
She remembered Mascagni and his Cavalleria, Leoncavallo and his Pagliacci. And she was almost glad that Claude was unknown. At any rate, he had never made a mistake. That was something to be thankful for. He must never make a mistake. But there would be no harm in arousing a certain interest in his personality, in his work. A man like Jacob Crayford kept a sharp look-out for fresh talent.
On the day he had fixed upon for the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its work, the singers were "at home" in their parts.
"It doesn't follow, my dear," he said, "that the two men were missing together because their names happen to come together on the list." Clara instantly drew the inevitable conclusion from that ill-considered reply. "Frank is missing from the party of relief," she said. "Am I to understand that Wardour is missing from the huts?" Both Crayford and Steventon hesitated. Mrs.
"There is something dreadful! I feel it, though I see nothing. I feel it, nearer and nearer in the empty air, darker and darker in the sunny light. I don't know what it is. Take me away! No. Not out on the beach. I can't pass the door. Somewhere else! somewhere else!" Mrs. Crayford looked round her, and noticed a second door at the inner end of the boat-house. She spoke to her husband.
"It is a risk, my love, to be out so long in the night air." "No! no! I like it. Play while I am out here looking at the sea. It quiets me; it comforts me; it does me good." She glides back, ghost-like, over the lawn. Mrs. Crayford rises, and puts down the volume that she has been reading. It is a record of explorations in the Arctic seas.
Nothing in the sky but the broad moon, and hardly a ripple to break the path of light she made in the quiet water. Mine was the middle watch that night. You came on deck, and found me alone " He stopped. Crayford took his hand, and finished the sentence for him. "Alone and in tears." "The last I shall ever shed," Wardour added, bitterly. "Don't say that!
Charmian was no longer evasive, though she honestly meant to be, thinking evasiveness was "the best way with Mr. Crayford." How could she, burning with secret eagerness, be evasive after a perfect dinner, when she saw the guest on whom all her hopes for the future were centered giving himself up almost greedily to the soft emotion which only comes on a night of nights?
Lake had not expressed an opinion. He had shrewdly made rather a mystery of the whole thing. This, as he expected, had put Crayford on the alert. Since the success of Jacques Sennier he saw the hand of his rival, "The Metropolitan," everywhere, like the giant hand of one of the great Trusts.
"A friend of yours, my dear?" she asked, innocently. "Suppose you introduce us to each other." Clara confusedly introduced the young gentleman. "Mr. Francis Aldersley, Lucy. Mr. Aldersley belongs to the Arctic expedition." "Attached to the expedition?" Mrs. Crayford repeated. "I am attached to the expedition too in my way. I had better introduce myself, Mr.
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