Franzi's one brief night of love which shone out, showing all the world golden, and then the little singer creeping back into the shadows with a broken heart but gay words on her lips. "I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to." Brown thought as he watched her that she showed promise as an actress. Why had he not noticed it before. He meditated a proposal by which she should be persuaded to join the company again when it started out on its Spring tour. Fanny had told him that Joan was tired of the life and meant to go back to office work, but if she had talent, that was of course absurd. Perhaps he had not done enough to encourage her. To-morrow he would have a good long talk with her and point out to her just how things stood. Fanny, too, was impressed by Joan's powers. "You act as if you really meant it, honey," she said. "You make me want to cry in that last bit where Franzi goes off and leaves me, a bloated aristocrat on the throne, with my erring husband beside me. You make me think you feel it." "Perhaps I do," Joan answered; "perhaps I am going back alone." "But why," Fanny cried out; she ran to Joan and threw her arms round the other girl, they were in the dressing-room making up for the evening performance. "Why, honey? He is ready to go with you." "And the Prince was ready to go with Franzi," Joan answered, "but she would not take him, not back into her land of shadows. Oh, Fanny, you are a dear, romantic soul, but you don't understand. Once, long ago when I was young, doesn't that sound romantic, there were two paths open to me and I chose the one which has to be travelled alone. If I dragged him on to it now it would only hurt him. You would not want to hurt something you loved," her voice dropped to a whisper, "would you?" "No," Fanny admitted. She had drawn a little back and was watching Joan with wide eyes. "But----" she broke off abruptly. "I haven't any right to ask," she said, "but do you mean that there is something which you have done that you would be ashamed to tell him." "Not exactly ashamed," Joan answered, "it would hurt him to know, that is all. I came to London two years ago because I was going to have a baby. It was never born, because I was in an accident a few months before it should have come." "But why tell him, why tell him?" Fanny clamoured. "Men have lots of secrets in their lives which they don't tell to good women, why must they want to know all about our pasts. I have always thought I should tell a man just exactly as much as I wanted to and not a whisper more. Honey," she drew close again and caught hold of Joan's hands, "it doesn't pay to tell them, the better they are the more they bring it up against you. If they don't say anything you can see it in their eyes. 'She has been bad once,' they say, 'she may always be bad again.'"