The girl on the lounge drew a long sobbing breath.
“You shall,” she said. “Listen! There was a Meysey Hill in Paris, an American railway millionaire. This man and he were alike, and about the same age. Montague Hill was taken for the millionaire once or twice, and I suppose it flattered his vanity. At any rate, he began to deliberately personate him. He sent me flowers. Celeste introduced him to me—oh, how Celeste hated me! She must have known. He—wanted to marry me. Just then—I was nervous. I had gone further than I meant to—with some Englishmen. I was afraid of being talked about. You don’t know, Anna, but when one is in danger one realizes that the—the other side of the line is Hell. The man was mad to marry me. I heard everywhere of his enormous riches and his generosity. I consented. We went to the Embassy. There was—a service. Then he took me out to Monteaux, on a motor. We were to have breakfast there and return in the evening. On the way he confessed. He was a London man of business, spending a small legacy in Paris. He had heard me sing—the fool thought himself in love with me. Celeste he knew. She was chaffing him about being taken for Meysey Hill, and suggested that he should be presented to me as the millionaire. He told me with a coarse nervous laugh. I was his wife. We were to live in some wretched London suburb. His salary was a few paltry hundreds a year. Anna, I listened to all that he had to say, and I called to him to let me get out. He laughed. I tried to jump, but he increased the speed. We were going at a mad pace. I struck him across the mouth, and across the eyes. He lost control of the machine. I jumped then—I was not even shaken. I saw the motor dashed to pieces against the wall, and I saw him pitched on his head into the road. I leaned over and looked at him—he was quite still. I could not hear his heart beat. I thought that he was dead. I stole away and walked to the railway station. That night in Paris I saw on the bills ‘Fatal Motor Accidents.’ Le Petit Journal said that the man was dead. I was afraid that I might be called upon as a witness. That is why I was so anxious to leave Paris. The man who came to our rooms, you know, that night was his friend.”
“The good God!” Anna murmured, herself shaken with fear. “You were married to him!”
“It could not be legal,” Annabel moaned. “It couldn’t be. I thought that I was marrying Meysey Hill, not that creature. We stepped from the Embassy into the motor—and oh! I thought that he was dead. Why didn’t he die?”
Anna sprang to her feet and walked restlessly up and down the room. Annabel watched her with wide-open, terrified eyes.
“You won’t give me away, Anna. He would never recognize me now. You are much more like what I was then.”
Anna stopped in front of her.
“You don’t propose, do you,” she said quietly, “that I should take this man for my husband?”
“You can drive him away,” Annabel cried. “Tell him that he is mad. Go and live somewhere else.”