She said: 

“But you seemed so jolly when you arrived last night.  Nobody would have guessed you had a care in the world.”

“I had not,” he replied eagerly, “as soon as I saw you.  The surprise of seeing you—­it was that....  And you left Paris without saying good-bye!  Why did you leave Paris without saying good-bye?  Never since the moment when I learnt that you had gone have I had the soul to practise.  My violin became a wooden box; my fingers, too, were of wood.”

He stopped.  The dog sniffed round.

Audrey was melting in bliss.  She could feel herself dissolving.  Her pleasure was terrible.  It was true that she had left Paris without saying good-bye to Musa.  She had done it on purpose.  Why?  She did not know.  Perhaps out of naughtiness, perhaps....  She was aware that she could be hard, like her father.  But she was glad, intensely glad, that she had left Paris so, because the result had been this avowal.  She, Audrey, little Audrey, scarcely yet convinced that she was grown up, was necessary to the genius whom all the Quarter worshipped!  Miss Thompkins was not necessary to him, Miss Nickall was not necessary to him, though both had helped to provide the means to keep him alive.  She herself alone was necessary to him.  And she had not guessed it.  She had not even hoped for it.  The effect of her personality upon Musa was mysterious—­she did not affect to understand it—­but it was obviously real and it was vital.  If anything in the world could surpass the pleasure, her pride surpassed it.  All tears were forgotten.  She was the proudest young woman in the world; and she was the wisest, and the most harassed, too.  But the anxieties were delicious to her.

“I am essential to him,” she thought ecstatically.  “I stand between him and disaster.  When he has succeeded his success will be my work and nobody else’s.  I have a mission.  I must live for it....  If anyone had told me a year ago that a great French genius would be absolutely dependent upon me, and that I meant for him all the difference between failure and triumph, I should have laughed....  And yet!...”  She looked at him surreptitiously.  “He’s an angel.  But he’s also a baby.”  The feelings of motherhood were as naught compared to hers.

Then she remarked harshly, icily: 

“Well, I shall be much obliged if you will go back to Paris at once—­to-day. Somebody must have a little sense.”

Just at this point Aguilar interrupted.  He came slouching round the corner of the clipped bushes, untidy, shabby, implacable, with some set purpose in his hard blue eyes.  She could have annihilated him with satisfaction, but the fellow was indestructible as well as implacable.

“Could I have a word with ye, madam?” he mumbled, putting on his well-known air of chicane.

With the unexplained Musa close by her she could not answer:  “Wait a little.  I’m engaged.”  She had to be careful.  She had to make out especially that she and the young man were up to nothing in particular, nothing that had the slightest importance.