“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?”