"You admit, then, that it is an end?"
"It is hardly a beginning," conceded Anna.
"She was so amazingly like your baroness would be if she painted and wore a wig——"
"That you are convinced they must be sisters. Thank you. Now what do you suppose is the good of telling me that?" And she stood still and faced him, her eyes flashing.
Do what he would, Axel could not help smiling at her wrath. It was the wrath of a mother whose child has been hurt by someone on purpose, "I wish," he said, "that you would not be so angry when I tell you things that might be important for you to know. If your baroness is really the sister of the dancing baroness——"
"But she is not. She told me last night that she has no brothers and sisters. And she wrote it in the letters before she came. Do you think it is a praiseworthy occupation for a man, doing his best to find out disgraceful things about a very poor and very helpless woman?"
"No, I do not," said Axel decidedly. "Under any other circumstances I would leave the poor lady to take her chance. But do consider," he said, following her, for she had begun to walk on quickly again, "do consider your unusual position. You are so young to be living away from your friends, and so young and inexperienced to be at the head of a home for homeless women—you ought to be quite extraordinarily particular about the antecedents of the people you take in. It would be most unpleasant if it got about that they were not respectable."
"But they are respectable," said Anna, looking straight before her.
"A sister who dances at the Wintergarten——"
"Did I not tell you that she has no sister?"