By this time the fortune-teller had begun to speak again. “You have a gift though, and that is for acting. You should go on the stage. You would make an excellent actress.” Deborah laughed, and she might be excused the rudeness of it: a more unlikely person for an actress was never born. It was she who had always been told to sit down in college when she got up to recite, and who had invariably been placed in the lowest class for reading. Moreover, she was short and insignificant in appearance, and by no means understood the art of dressing to advantage. Besides, another word for being an actress, in Deborah’s mind, was being “fast,” and she knew she was very far from being that. Again, she was not fond of actresses nor acting, though that was probably due to ignorance. There were only three of the few she had seen whom she had ever really liked, and those were Ellen Terry, Winifred Emery, and Annie Hughes. Yes, and one other—Amy Roselle; but she was dead. Ellen Terry had entranced her. She had only seen her once, but that once to her had been a perfect dream. She watched her almost with the absorbed interest she gave to the people in her other world, and when the play was over had felt an intense longing to go and put her arms round her neck and kiss her. To return to the fortune-teller. After she had delivered the last shot, as it were, she had no more to say, and they took their leave. Deborah was so angry and so disappointed that she could scarcely eat any tea, but was actress enough not to show it; so perhaps there was an ironical truth in the lady’s statements after all. “Fancy her telling you you could act,” said Susan. “Oh, yes, they always tell you something like that, or they think your vanity will be wounded,” Deborah replied, and hoped the thunder-storm would pass off before they went into the street again. They visited the theatre that night, and the fortune-teller passed completely out of Deborah’s mind, not to return for nearly two years. As she sat in the theatre and watched a great actor she began thinking of the curious interest she had always taken in him ever since the hanging of the little picture, long before she knew there was such a man in reality at all. “I wonder if, supposing I tried very hard with my writing, I might some day just be allowed to shake hands with him,” she thought. “I’d rather be spoken to by him than any other celebrity in the whole world.” She sighed. “I’d never be able to make a great enough name. I try hard enough now, and it never has the least effect.” When she went home she wrote another story, and pocketed all her pride and sent it to a very inferior novelette series. But they returned it. Deborah then made up her mind. “I will write nothing more till I am thirty,” she thought. “I’ve spent all my life so far in nothing but rejections, and after a certain point I don’t think they’re good for people. Besides, it’s waste of time.”