"I am dead," he answered. "I am dead to you. Let me go."
The listener could almost hear the effort of her breathing.
"I waited for you," she panted. "I was broken. I had to seem happy—but my heart was a tomb. You were all my life—all my hope. I know I wasn't what I might have been. I was what people call an adventuress. But my love for you was the one great, true thing of my life. Oh, why did you leave me?"
"For your own sake," he said slowly. "I am no mate for such a woman as you."
"My own sake?" she repeated. "My own sake—to take from me the only thing I had—my only chance?—to throw my life into the shadows? My own sake ... to have made me what I am?"
"I would have spared you this meeting," he returned, "if I had known. But the name Christine Manderson was strange to me. I had never heard it before."
"I changed my name," she said sadly. "I couldn't bear that any one should use the name that you had used. I called myself Christine Manderson, and went on the stage in New York. Oh, it was dreadful. All those long years since you left me I have lived under a mask—as you have seen me to-night. You thought I was smiling—but I didn't smile. You thought I was laughing—but I didn't laugh. It was all ... only disguised tears ... to hide myself."
"Go," his voice was torn. "For God's sake go ... Thea."
A second flash showed them again to the listener. Tranter was still holding her away from him. In that vivid fraction of a second the agony of her face was terrible.
"Thea!" she echoed pitifully. "Ah, yes—call me Thea! Poor Thea! Oh, doesn't that name awaken ... something? Hasn't it still some charm? Once you said it was the only name in all the world. Is it nothing to you now?"