--the curtains were thrown aside and a man
stepped out. She was powerless to move from her chair. All through
that brief but measureless space of time during which wonder kept him
silent, as fear did her, she cowered there, a limp helpless object.
Her courage and her presence of mind had alike deserted her. She
could neither speak nor move nor cry out.

"Annabel! God in Heaven, it is Annabel!"

She did not speak. Her lips parted, but no words came.

"What have you done to yourself?" he muttered. "You have dyed your
hair and darkened your eyebrows. But you are Annabel. I should know
you--in Heaven or Hell. Who is the other?"

"What other?"

Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. Her lips were dry and
cracked.

"The Annabel who lives here, who sings every night at the 'Unusual'?
They call her by your old name. Her hair and voice and figure are as
yours used to be. Who is she, I say?"

"My sister!" Annabel faltered.

He trembled violently. He seemed to be labouring under some great
excitement.

"I am a fool," he said. "All these days I have taken her for you. I
have pleaded with her--no wonder that I have pleaded with her in vain.
And all this time perhaps you have been waiting, expecting to hear
from me. Is it so, Annabel?"

"I did not know," she faltered, "anything about you. Why should I?"

"At last," he murmured, "at last I have found you. I must not let you
go again. Do you know, Annabel, that you are my wife."

"No," she moaned, "not that. I thought--the papers said----"

"You thought that I was dead," he interrupted. "You pushed the wheel
from my hand. You jumped, and I think that you left me. Yet you knew
that I was not dead. You came to see me in the hospital. You must have
repented a little, or you would not have done that."

"I did not come," she faltered. "It was my sister Anna. I had left
Paris."

He passed his hand wearily over his forehead.

"That is where I got confused," he said. "I opened my eyes, and she
was bending over my bedside. Then, I thought, she has repented, all
will be well. So I made haste and recovered. I came to London to look
for you, and somehow the figure I saw in my dreams had got mixed up
with you. Your sister! Great God, how like she is to what you were!"

Annabel looked around her nervously.

"These are her rooms," she said. "Soon she will return."

"The sooner the better," he answered. "I must explain to her. Annabel,
I cannot believe it. I have found