"Sybil?" he almost whispered.
Still she was silent. It was very hard what she had in mind to say. This winning, gracious man had been the hero of all her girlish dreams, as well as the honored "master," who was arbiter of her fate, and only now she realized how he had absorbed her life—how hard it was to give him up, all in a moment. Poor child! this second peril was almost greater than the first; but, worn and weary, she was incapable of reasoning, of seeking out motives then.
"Sybil?" came again the dear, tempting voice, "if I begged for bread, you would not treat me so! Beloved, answer me!" Kneeling there he reached out his arms and clasped her waist. "Answer me, at least!"
She sprang to her feet, and as she put her hands behind her, striving to break his strong clasp, she answered confusedly, brokenly: "I—I—can't—I must go—go quite away! You must know that! I—I—can't play—ever—any more!"
Very compassionately he reminded her: "You must have learned before this, Princess, the inexorable claim of the stage. Nothing but death releases an actor from duty."
"Well," she answered, bitterly, "that Sybil Lawton is dead!"
His face contracted painfully, but he answered steadily: "The world does not know that. It would be fatal to us all to close. I am sorry, but the play must go on, beloved."
Like lightning she recalled the warm hand pressures, the whispered sweet "asides," the passionate love-scene, and that long embrace in the chamber balcony, and cried out sharply: "With you? with you? I must act again with you?"
His arms fell from her waist; his face was hard and white as marble as he rose to his feet. His voice was icy, but during his next courteous, chill words he kept his eyes downcast that the tears might not bear witness to his pain.
"I forgot," he said, "that you were not experienced enough to sink the man in the artist, and—and you must pardon my dulness, but—I did not fully appreciate the—[he moistened his unwilling, stammering lips] the loathing you feel for me personally. I have proved very slow-witted, but I am not a pachyderm, and my intelligence can be reached, you see, by sharp, stinging pain. Your method is severe, Miss Lawton, but eminently successful. I am not likely to forget the lesson now that I have learned it."