Let's try to talk of real things.'

She spoke with a good deal of resolution and with far fewer graces or affectations than she had used on her entry into this gilt and plush sitting-room. She was becoming indeed, though she did not know it, more like her sister in manner than she had been for years, more familiar with her own language that she had not spoken for so long, more like Kezia in abrupt gestures and straight looks.

'You know that I am not coming back. You know that I am not going to take any of Grandma Tallis's money. You know that I don't want ever to see you again. If you should come to Paris again, pray don't disturb me.'

She grasped the ivory-handled parasol so tightly that it seemed it might break. Kezia Faunce watched her very curiously.

'I daresay you think that I am completely degraded, but pray don't waste any such pity on me. I am successful—I always have been successful. I am, in a way, triumphant over everything, over the usual conventions, the traditions that bind women, over the usual stupid emotions that cause them to waste their hearts and lives; over all the pettifogging duties and obligations that wear away a woman like you. Yes,' she repeated, with a shrill note creeping into her voice, 'I am in every way successful and triumphant, and I beg that you will not think of me with any compassion or believe that I have or ever could have any regrets.'

Miss Faunce's contemptuous smile had deepened as she listened to this flaunting speech.

'And the end?' she asked. 'What is the end to be?'

'I beg you not to concern yourself about that, Kezia. I daresay my end will be as comfortable and as edifying as yours, and at least, it is a long way off.'

'You are not so secure as you think,' said Miss Faunce. 'I was in Paris two or three days before I let you know that I was here, and I made inquiries, and I read things for myself. You are not so popular as you were. Although you deliberately blind yourself, people do realise that you are getting old.'

The actress gave a painful smile.

'A woman like myself is never old.'

'Oh, that is very easy to say, Martha, and I have no doubt that it consoles you. You are forty-five. It will not be very long before you are fifty. There are younger women, and I know that you do not get such good parts as you did. And the men don't run after you like they used to. That you have lost one or two wealthy—protectors, don't you call them? That you go about now with very much younger men, quite young boys in fact.'

'So you have been spying on me!' cried Mme. Lesarge, who looked quite livid. 'You who call yourself an honest, honourable woman!'

'No, I haven't been spying on you, Martha. It wasn't difficult to find out these things. Just a word here and there at the dressmakers, the perfumers, in the foyer of the theatre itself. Oh, I've been to see you two or three times. You act quite well, but you're getting tired, aren't you—very tired?'

'Your talk is ridiculous, inspired by envy. We are both of us in the prime of life. You need not look an old woman. If you had ever lived you would not do so, it is because everything has been dried up in you—always, you have faded without blooming.' Then, in desperation, almost with a note of appeal, Mme. Lesarge added: 'Why could you not let me alone? I haven't thought of you for years. When your note came I did have an impulse of kindness.'

'Neither of those statements is true,' interrupted Kezia Faunce with a force that held the other woman utterly silent. 'You know that you have thought about me, again and again, and of Stibbards, and of the life I lead, of your own childhood and our own father and mother and all our neighbours and friends.