He was silent for a moment or two. His lips were tight drawn. His eyes flashed as he turned towards her.
“Do you think that it is kind of you, Miss Pellissier,” he said, almost roughly, “to ignore your friends so? In your heart you know quite well that you could pay Sydney or me no greater compliment than to give us just a little of your confidence. We know London, and you are a stranger here. Surely our advice would have been worth having, at any rate. You might have spared yourself many useless journeys and disappointments, and us a good deal of anxiety. Instead, you are willing to go to a place like that where you ought not to be allowed to think of showing yourself.”
“Why not?” she asked quietly.
“The very question shows your ignorance,” he declared. “You know nothing about the stage. You haven’t an idea what the sort of employment you could get there would be like, the sort of people you would be mixed up with. It is positively hateful to think of it.”
She laid her fingers for a moment upon his arm.
“Mr. Brendon,” she said, “if I could ask for advice, or borrow money from any one, I would from you—there! But I cannot. I never could. I suppose I ought to have been a man. You see, I have had to look after myself so long that I have developed a terrible bump of independence.”
“Such independence,” he answered quickly, “is a vice. You see to what it has brought you. You are going to accept a post as chorus girl, or super, or something of that sort.”
“You do not flatter me,” she laughed.
“I am too much in earnest,” he answered, “to be able to take this matter lightly.”
“I am rebuked,” she declared. “I suppose my levity is incorrigible. But seriously, things are not so bad as you think.”