was one which was taken from
him when he forced his way in upon me before. Now you can understand
why every minute is a torture to me. It is not for myself I fear. But
if he speaks--I fear what he may tell."

"You have been to her?" he asked.

"I dare not," she answered.

"I will go," he said. "She must be warned. She had better escape if
she can."

Anna shook her head.

"She will take her risk," she answered. "I am sure of it. If he
recovers he may not accuse her. If he dies she is safe."

He paced the room for a minute or two restlessly.

"There are some people," he said at last, "who seem fated to carry on
their shoulders the burdens of other people. You, Anna, are one of
them. I know in Paris you pinched and scraped that your sister might
have the dresses and entertainments she desired. You fell in at once
with her quixotic and damnable scheme of foisting her reputation and
her follies upon your shoulders whilst she marries a rich man and
commences all over again a life of selfish pleasure. You on the other
hand have to come to London, a worker, with the responsibility of life
upon your own shoulders--and in addition all the burden of her
follies."

"You forget," she said, looking up at him with a faint smile, "that
under the cloak of her name I am earning more money a week than I
could ever have earned in a year by my own labours."

"It is an accident," he answered. "Besides, it is not so. You sing
better than Annabel ever did, you have even a better style. 'Alcide'
or no 'Alcide,' there is not a music hall manager in London or Paris
who would not give you an engagement on your own merits."

"Perhaps not," she answered. "And yet in a very few weeks I shall have
done with it all. Do you think that I shall ever make an actress, my
friend?"

"I doubt it," he answered bluntly. "You have not feeling enough."

She smiled at him.

"It is like old times," she said, "to hear these home truths. All the
same, I don't admit it."

He shook his head.

"To be an actress," he said, "you require a special and peculiar
temperament. I do not believe that there has ever lived a really great
actress whose moral character from the ordinary point of view would
bear inspection."

"Then I," she said, "have too much character."

"Too much character, and too little sentiment," he answered. "Too much
sensibility and too cold a heart. Too easily roused emotions and too
little passion. How could you draw the curtain asid