"When the public see that, they will know what you are really like, Gerty--instead of buying your photograph in a shop from a collection of ballet-dancers and circus women. That is where you ought to be--in the Royal Academy: not in a shop-window with any mountebank. Oh, Gerty, do you know who is your latest rival in the stationers' windows? The woman who dresses herself as a mermaid and swims in a transparent tank, below water--Fin-fin they call her. I suppose you have not been reading the newspapers?" "Not much." "There is a fine collection for you upstairs. And there is an article about you in the _Islington Young Men's Improvement Association_. It is signed _Trismegistus_. Oh, it is beautiful, Gerty--quite full of poetry! It says you are an enchantress striking the rockiest heart, and a well of pure emotion springs up. It says you have the beauty of Mrs. Siddons and the genius of Rachel." "Dear me!" "Ah, you don't half believe in yourself, Gerty," said the younger sister, with a critical air. "It is the weak point about you. You depreciate yourself, and you make light of other people's belief in you. However, you can't go against your own genius. That is too strong for you. As soon as you get on the stage, then you forget to laugh at yourself." "Really, Carry, has papa been giving you a lecture about me?" "Oh, laugh away? but you know it is true. And a woman like you--you were going to throw yourself away on a--" "Carry! There are some things that are better not talked about," said Gertrude White, curtly, as she rose and went indoors. Miss White betook herself to her professional and domestic duties with much alacrity and content, for she believed that by her skill as a letter-writer she could easily ward off the importunities of her too passionate lover. It is true that at times, and in despite of her playful evasion, she was visited by a strange dread. However far away, the cry of a strong man in his agony had something terrible in it. And what was this he wrote to her in simple and calm words?-- "Are our paths diverging, Gerty? and if that is so, what will be the end of it for me and for you? Are you going away from me? After all that has passed, are we to be separated in the future, and you will go one way and I must go the other way, with all the world between us, so that I shall never see you again? Why will you not speak? You hint of lingering doubts and hesitations. Why have you not the courage to be true to yourself--to be true to your woman's heart--to take your life in your own hands, and shape it so that it shall be worthy of you?" Well, she did speak in answer to this piteous prayer. She was a skilful letter-writer: "It may seem very ungrateful in an actress, you know, dear Keith, to contest the truth of anything said by Shakespeare; but I don't think, with all humility, there ever was so much nonsense put into so small a space as there is in these lines that everybody quotes at your head--