Anna the Adventuress

"You--you did what?" Anna exclaimed.

"Called myself Anna," the girl repeated coolly. "It can't make any

difference to you, and there are not half a dozen people in Paris who

could tell us apart."

Anna tried to look angry, but her mouth betrayed her. Instead, she

laughed, laughed with lips and eyes, laughed till the tears ran down

her cheeks.

"You little wretch!" she exclaimed weakly. "Why should I bear the

burden of your wickedness? Who knows what might come of it? I shall

permit nothing of the sort."

Annabel shrugged her shoulders.

"Too late, my dear girl," she exclaimed. "I gave your name. I called

myself Anna. After all, what can it matter? It was just to make sure.

Three little letters can't make a bit of difference."

"But it may matter very much indeed," Anna declared. "Perhaps for

myself I do not mind, but this man is sure to find out some day, and

he will not like having been deceived. Tell him the truth, Annabel."

"The truth!"

There was a brief but intense silence. Anna felt that her words had

become charged with a fuller and more subtle meaning than any which

she had intended to impart. "The truth!" It was a moment of

awkwardness between the two sisters--a moment, too, charged with its

own psychological interest, for there were secrets between them which

for many months had made their intercourse a constrained and difficult

thing. It was Annabel who spoke.

"How crude you are, Anna!" she exclaimed with a little sigh. "Sir John

is not at all that sort. He is the kind of man who would much prefer a

little dust in his eyes. But heavens, I must pack!"

She sprang to her feet and disappeared in the room beyond, from which

she emerged a few minutes later with flushed cheeks and dishevelled

hair.

"It is positively no use, Anna," she declared, appealingly. "You must

pack for me. I am sorry, but you have spoilt me. I can't do it even

decently myself, and I dare not run the risk of ruining all my

clothes."

Anna laughed, gave in and with deft fingers created order out of

chaos. Soon the trunk, portmanteau and hat box were ready. Then she

took her sister's hand.

"Annabel," she said, "I have never asked you for your confidence. We

have lived under the same roof, but our ways seem to have lain wide

apart. There are many things which I do not understand. Have you

anything to tell me before you go?"

Annabel laughed lightly.

"My dear Anna! As though I should think of depressing you with my long

list of misdeeds."

"You have nothing to tell me?"

"Nothing!"

So Annabel departed with the slightest of farewells, wearing a thick

travelling veil, and sitting far back in the corner of a closed

carriage. Anna watched her from the windows, watched the carriage jolt

away along the cobbled street and disappear. Then she stepped back

into the empty room and stood for a moment looking down upon the

scattered fragments of her last canvas.