"Ah," she smiled, "forgive me. I didn't mean that. But be nice still. Am I to reject a career because I'm not starving? I'm starving with my soul. I'm like a poor mute battling for voice. I want--I want to give expression to what I feel within me." She beat her hands in her lap. "I'm willing to struggle--eager to! You've always known it. Why do you disappoint me now? I have to begin even lower than I understood, that's all. And what is it? I shall be surrounded by artists then. By degrees I shall rise. 'You are in the right way, but remember what I say, Study, study, study! Study well, and God bless you!' Do you know who said that?--Mrs. Siddons to Macready. It was at Newcastle, and it was about her performance the same night that he wrote: 'The violence of her emotion seemed beyond her power longer to endure, and the words, faintly articulated, "Was he alive?" sent an electric thrill through the audience.' Think what that means; three words! I can't do it, I've tried--oh, how I've tried! For months after I read that book, I used to say them dozens of times every day, with every intonation I could think of. But there was no effect, no thrill even to myself. 'Study, study, study! Keep your mind on your art, do not remit your study, and you are certain to succeed!' I _will_ keep my mind on it, I'll obey her advice, I _will_ succeed. Heaven couldn't be so cruel as to let me fail after putting such longings into me." Heriot sighed. The impulse to tell her that he loved her, to keep her to himself, was mastering him. Never before had her hold on him been displayed so vividly, nor had the temptation to throw prudence to the winds been quite so strong. "If you had a happier home," he said, "there would be other influences. Don't think me impertinent, but it can't be very lively for you in that house." "It isn't a whirl of gaiety, and Aunt Lydia is not ideal. But--but I was just the same in Duluth." "Duluth!" he echoed; "it was dreary in Duluth, too." "At all events I had my father there." "What does he write?" asked Heriot. "Have you had a letter since I saw you?" "He gives no news. The news is to come from _me_." "I think there's a little," he said; "I can tell it by your tone." "It's cheerful to be with some one who _can_ tell things by one's tone. Well, he thinks, if I can't make a beginning, that I may as well go back." "I see," he said. "I won't ask you if you mean to." She laughed a shade defiantly. "Duluth has many charms--I've been remembering them since his letter. There is my father, and there's strawberry-shortcake. My father will be disappointed in me if I have to go; the strawberry-shortcake--well, there's a tiny shop there where they sell it hot. I've never seen it hot anywhere else--and they turn on the cream with a tap, out of a thing that looks like a miniature cistern." "You're not going back," he said. "You're going on the stage as a supernumerary instead?"