South America.  And her honey-coloured hair, piled high, with a fantastic Spanish comb flaring above the topmost curls, struck him as needlessly theatrical.  He blamed Martigues for that.  His humour was not improved by the Basque painter’s voluble compliments on the success of a coiffure he felt to be his own creation.  The fellow was too familiar, thought Oliver, with increasing irritation.  He darkened, grew glum and silent; and when, after dinner, Martigues approached him with a luckless tribute to Madame Shaw’s superlative loveliness, he answered curtly, and turned on his heel.  Myra witnessed the brief discourtesy, and later very gently taxed him with it.  What had the unfortunate artist done?  He faced her like a sulky boy and would not answer; but she was quick to penetrate his grievance.  She laughed then, as a woman laughs who has nothing to conceal, declaring that Martigues’s taste was not infallible, and that Oliver knew best what became his Myra.  She soon wooed him back to his old charming self, and the incident passed.  But there were others on the following days, and Myra grew thoughtful.

She and Oliver were seldom alone.  Her joy of life, her vitality, her very talent, depended on a multitude of impressions, on innumerable personal contacts.  She belonged to a rich, throbbing world of emotions; she gathered passion for her song from the yearnings, the anonymous aspirations, even the crudities of the human forces about her.

She was Oliver’s most gloriously when most surrounded.  His pride was centred on her; it was centred, however, on the brilliant returns of her actual presence—­a presence which was never too far removed in flesh or spirit to deprive him of a certain naive assumption of ownership.  That she should continue all the dear, familiar fascinations beyond his sight or touch, in a far-away land, with David Cannon as a daily companion, was another matter.  Not that he was jealous of David.  No one man stood out as a rival.  But Cannon travelling with Myra, sharing artistic triumphs with her, escorting her to entertainments given in her honour, Cannon, in fact, associated in foreign minds with the beautiful cantatrice, offended the inviolable rights of his lover’s vanity.  He would have her less beautiful, less gifted, not more faithful.

Exquisitely sensitive where he was concerned, Myra detected this subtle change in his attitude toward her and her work.  The origins of the change, she knew, were obscurely lodged in the male egoism.  He himself was not aware of them.  He seemed nearer and dearer than ever, even more ardent.  He wanted her constantly within range of his eyes and hands that he might in a thousand coaxing or, often, petulant ways assert a fond dominion.  She yielded gladly to that sweet pressure.  Strangely enough for a woman of her independent habits, to be so loved, roused elemental instincts the more powerful since she had never before given them outlet.  So she allowed his illusions of mastery full play, which was dangerous, as gradually she altered the delicate balance of their relationship.