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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
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