She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of sullen fire.
"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this later—not now—later. I will answer anything—everything. I can and I will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that—"
"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back. Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers, 'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or anybody.'"
He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things seriously—with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. He essayed the old way now.
"This is just absurd, old girl;"—she shrank—"you really are mad. Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to you—your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be reasonable. I will see you—afterwards—late."
A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards—late.' No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, I hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head in the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you—oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"—she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart—"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. I'm not of this world."
She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others—all unreal, unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in our own lives, but to be true—real and true. For one's own life as well as one's work to be all grease-paint—no, no, no. I have hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin—"
"The sin of an angel—"
She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before?
"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued.