'I think you do, Martha. I saw hatred in your eyes all the time we were talking together. You were thinking that I was old and ugly and your twin sister.'

'Did you read me as clearly as that?' smiled Mme. Lesarge, rather pale under the careful tinting of powder and rouge. 'Well, perhaps some such thought did come into my mind. You've let yourself go, you see, terribly, Kezia. You look fifteen years older than you are. I suppose you rather revel in it.'

'I've let myself alone,' replied Miss Faunce. 'I am as God made me. My hair is the colour yours ought to be, my face looks as yours would look without all that stuff you've got on it.'

'Not quite, I think,' said Mme. Lesarge. 'We have different thoughts, different minds. We live very differently. I don't suppose if we were stripped side by side we should look in the least alike.'

'Don't you? Well, I think that if we were stripped, people would know us for twins, but that's not what I want to argue about. And I don't want to hear about your life, which I am sure is vile and disgusting. It was thinking of your life and how horrible it was that brought me here. I felt it was my duty to try and save you.'

'Oh, for pity's sake,' murmured the actress. She picked up her gold-mesh bag and her ivory-handled parasol. 'You are really becoming absurd, ridiculous. Save me—from what?'

'You know quite well what I mean, and I really do want to save you. I dare say that, as you boast, I don't know as much of the world as you do, but I know what happens to women like you when they are not young. I suppose you haven't saved anything?'

'No, and I am in debt,' smiled the actress.

'I thought so. What are you going to do when you can't any longer get parts—when you can't find any friends?'

'That is many, many years ahead,' replied Mme. Lesarge. 'You need not concern yourself about my future, my dear Kezia. Even if I do live to be old I shall—'

'Well, what will you do?'

Miss Faunce leaned forward eagerly.

'I shall repent, of course. Either marry some good man and go and live in the country or go into a convent. You know I am a Roman Catholic?'

Miss Faunce shuddered.

'You are the first of our family to become that,' she said with real distress.

Mine. Lesarge laughed. She was uneasy and wanted to escape.

'Did you really come to Paris to say these silly things to me?' she said. 'You have wasted your time and your money.'

'I have plenty of both,' replied Kezia, 'you know Grandmother Tallis died last year.