"You remember our first meeting?"
"Yes," he answered hoarsely. "I remember it very well indeed. You have
the look in your eyes to-night which you had that day, the look of a
frightened child."
She looked into her glass.
"I was frightened then," she declared. "I am frightened now. But it is
all very different. There was hope for me then. Now there is none. No,
none at all."
"You talk strangely, Anna," he said. "Go on!"
"People talked to you in Paris about us," she continued, "about Anna
the virtuous and Annabel the rake. You were accused of having been
seen with the latter. You denied it, remembering that I had called
myself Anna. You went even to our rooms and saw my sister. Anna lied
to you, I lied to you. I was Annabel the rake, 'Alcide' of the music
halls. My name is Annabel, not Anna. Do you understand?"
"I do not," he answered. "How could I, when your sister sings now at
the 'Unusual' every night and the name 'Alcide' flaunts from every
placard in London?"
"The likeness between us," she said, "before I began to disfigure
myself with rouge and ill-dressed hair, was remarkable. Anna failed in
her painting, our money was gone, and she was forced to earn her own
living. She came to London, and tried several things without any
success."
"But why----"
Sir John stopped short. With a moment of inward shame he remembered
his deportment towards Anna. It was scarcely likely that she would
have accepted his aid. Some one had once, in his hearing, called him a
prig. He remembered it suddenly. He thought of his severe attitude
towards the girl who was rightly and with contempt refusing his
measured help. He looked across at Annabel, and he groaned. This was
his humiliation as well as hers.
"Anna of course would not accept any money from us," she continued.
"She tried everything, and last of all she tried the stage. She went
to a dramatic agent, and he turned out to be the one who had heard me
sing in Paris. He refused to believe that Anna was not 'Alcide.' He
thought she wished to conceal her identity because of the connexion
with you, and he offered her an engagement at once. She was never
announced as 'Alcide,' but directly she walked on she simply became
'Alcide' to every one. She had a better voice than I, and the rest I
suppose is only a trick. The real 'Alcide'," she wound up with a faint
smile across the table at him, "is here."
He sat like a man turned to stone. Some part of the stiff vigour of
the man seemed to have subsided. He seemed to have shrunken in his
seat. His eyes were fixed upon her face, but he opened his lips twice
before he spoke.