I suppose there'll be bouquets?'

'I suppose so. It is rather an especial occasion. Why did you ask?'

Kezia Faunce did not reply. She had grown flowers, profusion, multitudes of flowers all her life, she had given away flowers for village weddings and funerals, to the poor, the sick, to charity, to church festivals; she had plucked flowers by the armful, the basketful, to adorn her room, but she had never had as much as a single rose or lily given her, and all her life Martha had been receiving bouquets.

'Well,' she said, 'one kiss has got to be the last kiss, you know, and one bouquet the last bouquet. I wonder if you've ever thought of that?'

'Yes, I've thought of it,' replied the actress coolly. 'I daresay we have a good many thoughts in common. Never mind, my dear, I daresay I shall repent, as you call it, in time. I shall marry, as I said, some old respectable man, and keep house for him to the best of my ability. Or I shall go into a convent, or, I might die suddenly. In any of these cases there would be no more kisses nor bouquets, and I suppose you would be satisfied, Kezia?'

'Satisfied? I don't know. But I should like to think that the kind of life you are leading had come to an end. I shall watch the papers, Martha—the French papers.'

'Whatever I do won't be in the papers,' laughed Mme. Lesarge. 'I shall keep it secret.'

'How am I to know then? I don't want you to write to me. I don't want a French letter to be seen at Stibbards.'

'Oh, I shan't write to you, but you'll know, somehow. I'll send you my last bouquet, Kezia.'

She pulled the door open, and with the swiftness of one well versed in dramatic effect was gone.

Kezia Faunce sat down, trembling; the palms of her hands and her forehead were damp. How hateful this interview had been! What a mistake—this hideous visit to Paris! She had certainly satisfied a curiosity that had haunted her for years; through all her monotonous, orderly, placid life had always run the question 'What is Martha like? She had sometimes woken up in the middle of the night after a dream that had been of some other subject and sat up in bed and said to herself, half-aloud: 'What is Martha doing now? What is she wearing? Who is her present lover? What part is she playing? How many people are drinking her health or sending her presents? What does she look like and how much money has she got?' And all these questions had been like so many arrows piercing her in the dark. She had felt that her own life was poor and mean before the opulence and splendour of Martha's life and yet at the same time, by a maddening paradox, she had felt intensely proud of her own virtue, supremely scornful of her twin sister's wickedness.

Nobody ever spoke of Martha in Stibbards. It was nearly thirty years since she had run away and Miss Faunce hoped that she had been forgotten through the sheer force of never being mentioned. Many people, surely, believed she was dead, and a great many more, even if they did occasionally read the newspapers and see the name therein of a certain famous actress, would not associate the name of Marcelle Lesarge with that of Martha Faunce. But always in her twin sister's mind she had been alive, vital, and exasperating, until this suppressed emotion had not been any longer endurable and Miss Faunce, under some excuse, more or less feasible, had left Stibbards and come to Paris and sought out and really seen Martha.

And now it was over, that momentous interview, and it had been nothing but recriminations, a bitter and humiliating quarrelling and an intensifying of her deep emotion of mingled contempt and envy. She sat stiffly in the red plush empire chair and rested her head on the back and closed her eyes and imagined herself in Martha's place.

She saw herself as Mme. Marcelle Lesarge stepping out into her little phaeton with the smart groom in a smart livery on the box, and some comely, well-dressed gentleman beside her. She saw herself being swept over the cobbled Paris streets, laughing, chattering, bowing to acquaintances, and so to her sumptuous apartments.

Why hadn't Martha asked her to her apartment, why hadn't she, Kezia, insisted on going there? Merely through lack of courage. Because she had been ashamed of herself as much as of her sister. She would not have known how to behave to the people whom she might have met in Martha's bijou little house.

Ah, what was it like, that little house? Very different from Stibbards, Kezia was sure, full of gilded furniture, of pictures and statuary, all presents from her lovers, no doubt. And these lovers, who and what were they? Kezia Faunce had heard many rumours, many scandalous tales. She did not know which of them to credit. But what did that matter, the lovers were there, and she might imagine them as she pleased.

She opened her eyes and sat up. She found that this identification of herself with her twin sister was a dangerous pastime.