"You must not forget," Anna said calmly, "that it is necessary for me also--to live. I arrived here with something less than five pounds in my pocket. My reception at West Kensington you know of. I was the black sheep, I was hurried out of the way. You did not complain then that I personated you--no, nor when Sir John came to me in Paris, and for your sake I lied." "You did not----" "Wait, Annabel! When I arrived in London I went to live in the cheapest place I could find. I set myself to find employment. I offered myself as a clerk, as a milliner, as a shop girl. I would even have taken a place as waitress in a tea shop. I walked London till the soles of my shoes were worn through, and my toes were blistered. I ate only enough to keep body and soul together." "There was no need for such heroism," Annabel said coldly. "You had only to ask----" "Do you think," Anna interrupted, with a note of passion trembling also in her tone, "that I would have taken alms from Sir John, the man to whom I had lied for your sake. It was not possible. I went at last when I had barely a shilling in my purse to a dramatic agent. By chance I went to one who had known you in Paris." "Well!" "He greeted me effusively. He offered me at once an engagement. I told him that I was not 'Alcide.' He only laughed. He had seen the announcement of your marriage in the papers, and he imagined that I simply wanted to remain unknown because of your husband's puritanism. I sang to him, and he was satisfied. I did not appear, I have never announced myself as 'Alcide.' It was the Press who forced the identity upon me." "They were my posters," Annabel said. "The ones Cariolus did for me." "The posters at least," Anna answered quietly, "I have some claim to. You know very well that you took from my easel David Courtlaw's study of me, and sent it to Cariolus. You denied it at the time--but unfortunately I have proof. Mr. Courtlaw found the study in Cariolus' studio." Annabel laughed hardly. "What did it matter?" she cried. "We are, or rather we were, so much alike then that the portrait of either of us would have done for the other. It saved me the bother of being studied." "It convinced Mr. Earles that I was 'Alcide,'" Anna remarked quietly. "We will convince him now to the contrary," Annabel answered. Anna looked at her, startled. "What do you mean?" she asked. Annabel set her teeth hard, and turned fiercely towards Anna. "It means that I have had enough of this slavery," she declared. "My husband and all his friends are fools, and the life they lead is impossible for me. It takes too many years to climb even a step in the social ladder. I've had enough of it. I want my freedom." "You mean to say," Anna said slowly, "that you are going to leave your husband?" "Yes." "You are willing to give up your position, your beautiful houses, your carriages and milliner's accounts to come back to Bohemianism?"