"Don't bother to, Clive. Pretty nearly everything has been said about me, I fancy. And, unless it might damage you I'll go anywhere with you, do anything with you. _I_ know that I'm all right; and I care no longer what others say or think." "But you know," he said, "that is a theory which will not work--" "You are wrong, Clive. Nobody cares what sort of character a popular actress may have. Her friends are not disturbed by her reputation; the public crowds to see her. And it's about that way with me, I imagine. Because I don't suppose many people believe me to be respectable. Only--there is no man alive who can say of his own knowledge that I am not,--whatever he and his brothers and sisters may imagine." "So why should I care?--as long as the public affords me an honest living! _I_ know what I am, and have been. And the knowledge, so far, does not keep me awake at night." She laughed--the sweet, fresh, unembarrassed laugh of innocence,--not that ignorance and stupidity which is called innocence, but innocence based on a worldly wisdom which neither her intelligence nor her experience permitted her to escape. After a short silence he bent forward and laid one hand on a crystal which stood clasped by a tiny silver tripod on the table beside her bed. "So you did develop your--qualities--after all, Athalie." "Yes.... It happened accidentally." And she told him about the old gentleman who had come to her rooms when she stood absolutely penniless and at bay before the world. After she had ended he asked her whether she had ever again seen his father. She told him. She told him also about seeing his mother. "Have they anything to say to me, Athalie?" he asked wistfully. "I don't know, Clive. Some day--when you feel like it--if you will come to me--" "Thank you, dear ... you are wonderful--wonderfully good--" "Oh, Clive, I'm not! I'm careless, pleasure-loving, inclined to laziness--and even to dissipation--" "You!" "Within certain limits," she added demurely. "I dance a lot: I know I smoke too much and drink too much champagne. I'm no angel, Clive. I won altogether too much at auction last night; ask Jim Allys. And really, if I didn't have a mind and feel a desire to cultivate it, I'd be the limit I suppose." She laughed and tossed her chin; and the pure loveliness of her child-like throat was suddenly and exquisitely revealed. "I'm too intelligent to go wrong I suppose," she said. "I adore cultivating my mental faculties even more than I like to misbehave." She added a trifle shyly. "I speak French and Italian and German very nicely. And I sing a little and play acceptably. Please compliment me, Clive." But her quick smile died out as she looked into his eyes--eyes haunted by the vision of all that he had denied his manhood and this girl's young womanhood--all that he had lost, irretrievably and forever on that day he married another woman. "What is the matter, Clive?" she asked with sweet concern.