"Oh, it isn't anything disgraceful. It's just a misfortune. You remember you have been asking me where I learned to ride--whether I didn't use to live on a ranch--questions like that. Well, you must have noticed that I didn't answer." "Yes, we did notice, and we spoke about it," said truthful Ruth. "We thought you didn't wish to tell," added Alice. "Wish to tell! Oh, my dears, I would have been only too glad to tell if I could." "Why can't you?" asked Ruth. "Are you bound by some vow of secrecy? Is it dangerous for you to reveal the past?" "No, it is simply impossible!" "Impossible!" the two sisters exclaimed. "Yes, I can no more tell you what life I lived, where I lived, who I was, or what I was doing, up to a time of about three or four years ago, than I can fly." "Why not?" asked Alice, puzzled. "Because the past--up to the time I named--is a perfect blank to me. My mind refuses absolutely to tell me who I was or where I lived--who my people were--anything of the past. My mind is like a blank sheet of paper. I can remember nothing. Oh, isn't it awful!" and she burst into tears. CHAPTER XVIII "WHAT CAN WE DO?" "You poor dear!" cried Alice, and she knelt down on the floor beside Estelle and put her arms about the weeping girl. Ruth, too, with an expression of sympathy, stroked the bowed head. "We want so much to help you," Ruth murmured. "Let me get you something," begged Alice. "Some smelling salts--some ammonia--shall I call any one--the doctor----?" "No, I--I'll be all right presently," said Estelle in a broken voice. "Just let me alone a little while--I mean stay with me--talk to me--tell me something. I want to get control of my nerves." Ruth did not seem to know what to say, but Alice pulled a small bottle from her pocket, and held it under Estelle's nose. "It's the loveliest new scent," she said. "I bought a sample in town." Estelle burst into a laugh, rather a hysterical laugh, it is true, but a laugh nevertheless. It showed that the strain and tension were relaxing to some extent. "Isn't it sweet?" Alice asked. "It is, dear. Let me smell it again. It makes me feel better," and Estelle breathed in deep of the odorous scent. "How silly I was to give way like that," she went on. "But I simply couldn't help it. This has been going on for so long, and it got so I couldn't stand it another minute. How would you like it not to know who you are?" "Not very much, I'm afraid," said Ruth, softly. "That, in a way, is why it has been such a relief to be in the moving pictures," Estelle went on. "I could be so many different characters, and, at times, I thought perhaps, by chance, I might be cast for the very part I have lost--cast for my real self, as it were." "You must have had a hard time," said Alice. "I haven't told you half the story yet," Estelle went on. "Would you like to hear the rest?" "Indeed we would!" exclaimed Ruth. "Not from any idle curiosity, but because we want to help you."