We had better try to forget each other again.'

'I wish I could forget, Martha, but you know perfectly well that one can't forget just because one wants to...I've tried to forget you time and again for years, but it's no use. You keep coming up in my mind—between me and my duty, between me and my prayers, sometimes.'

Mme. Lesarge laughed uneasily. The more she considered the situation the more she felt it imperative for her sister to leave Paris quietly and at once.

'Well, I can't help that, can I, Kezia? You must have got a morbid mind. I can't say I ever think of you, though I very well might. I might say that you got on my nerves.'

'That's impertinence,' put in Kezia sharply. Her lips were dry and trembling, and her flaccid cheeks quite pale.

'I don't see that it is impertinence. I ran away from home when I was sixteen, and I have had all manner of adventures since.'

'Pray don't relate any of them to me,' flung in Kezia.

'As if I should!' The actress smiled with a maddening self-complacency. 'You wouldn't understand them. They are quite out of the range of your experience. But, as I said, I left home when I was sixteen and I think it would be quite reasonable for me to feel that it was rather dreadful to think of you at Stibbards all that time—going on just the same, day in, day out. Doing everything exactly as mother used to do it. And grandmother before that, I suppose.'

'In other words,' interrupted Kezia, 'leading the life of a decent gentlewoman with a sense of honour and of duty.'

'How can you talk like that?' asked Mme. Lesarge with a vicious smile. 'Don't you realise how really shocking that sounds to me? But I suppose I ought to be sorry for you. You never had the strength to break away.'

Miss Faunce rose and walked to the window and peered down through the stiff, white, starched lace curtains into the narrow noisy street below and watched a baker's boy putting the very long powdered loaves into a handcart. She wanted to say what she had to say with the deadly effect of perfect calm. She realised that it would, perhaps, be better to say nothing at all, but she could not attain to that amount of self-control.

She must, clearly, and once and for all, get out of her heart and soul all her thoughts about her twin sister.

Mme. Lesarge was glad of this respite. She was sorry about the quarrel, which had been unbecoming and exhausting; she regretted that she had not had more power over herself. It had been a very long time since she had been in such a rage; she was, on the whole, a good-natured woman and not often crossed nor exasperated. Her life had been easy, full of facile success, light friendships and superficial adulation; she avoided everyone who disapproved of her, therefore this violent interview had been a detestable experience.

She rose also and went, not to the window, but to a mirror and there skilfully adjusted the smooth curls that should, perhaps, have been the same colour as the harsh locks of her sister, but which were very carefully tinted a glossy auburn. She took paint and powder from her reticule and made up her lips and her cheeks; she always looked at herself a little anxiously when she studied her face in the mirror, but never had she looked at herself so anxiously as she did now. For she seemed to see in her comely face, which had satisfied her well enough until the present moment, the ugly lines, the sour bilious tint, the creeping wrinkles, and the sagging folds that for the last half-hour she had been observing with fear and terror in the countenance of her twin sister.

She had thought, quite gaily, as she had come up the hotel stairs:

'I suppose Kezia will be looking a terrible frump by now.'

But she had been quite unprepared for what Kezia really did look like.

All the time they had been quarrelling she had been unable to take a terrified, fascinated gaze from the plain woman seated opposite her, and she had thought continuously, 'She is my age to the very minute.' Of course, no one would recognize that there was the least likeness between them; it was not only the dress and the paint and the dye and the acquired graces that disguised the actress. Although they were twin sisters their natures were absolutely different, always had been, but the fact remained that they were twin sisters, and Mme. Lesarge knew that she would feel deeply uneasy until she was assured that Kezia had left Paris and was not likely to return.

So, when she had a little reassured herself by that nervous, anxious contemplation of her reflection in the mirror (her figure at least was very good, and her taste in clothes excellent), she turned and said, with an attempt at conciliation:

'Let us part with some civility at least, Kezia. I wish you no ill will. It was a stupid mistake for us to meet. When are you leaving Paris?'

Miss Faunce turned round from the window. She felt she had herself well in hand now, would be able to say exactly what she meant without allowing her passion to betray her into useless abuse.

'I don't know that it was a mistake for me to come to Paris,' she said deliberately. 'I felt it my duty to do so. As I said, I have been thinking of you continuously for years. I live alone, as you know, and of course, there is plenty to do, I am never idle. But there is no other person beside yourself nearly connected with me. Say and think what you like, Martha, we are twin sisters, and I suppose there is some sort of bond,' she paused and added, 'even if it be a bond of hatred.'

'Hatred,' repeated the actress, with an elegant shrug, 'that's an ugly word to use, isn't it? Why do you bother about me at all? I don't hate you, I assure you.'

'Oh, yes, I think you do,' said Miss Faunce.