“I will not starve here.  And now that this—­this disgrace—­”

“Father would think it no less disgrace to see you an actress.  Listen:  a little while ago he came this way, meaning to curse me, but he turned back and did not.  And now you come, and are confused, and I read you just as plainly.  While my wits are so clear I want to say one or two things to you.  Yesterday—­only yesterday—­I left home for ever, and here I am back again.  I have been wicked, you say, and there is nothing sinful in becoming an actress.  Perhaps not:  yet I am sure father would think it sinful—­even more selfishly sinful than my fault, because it would hurt the careers of Jacky and Charles; and that, as you know, he would never forgive.”

“Who are you, to be lecturing me?”

“I am your sister, who has done wrong:  I have tasted bitter fruit and must go eating it all my life.  But it is fruit of knowledge—­ah, listen, Emmy!  If you do this and become famous, the greater your fame, the greater the injury; or so father would hold it, and perhaps our brothers too.  Hetty can be hidden and forgotten in a far country parish.  But can Jacky become a bishop, having an actress for sister?”

“You are sudden in this thought for your brothers.”

“It is not of them I am thinking.  I say that if you succeed you will lose father’s forgiveness and always carry with you this sorrowful knowledge.  Yet I would bid you go and do it; for to be great is worth much cost of sorrow, and sorrow might even increase your greatness.  But have you that strength?  And if you should not succeed?—­We know nothing of the world:  all our thoughts of it come out of books and dreaming.  You imagine yourself treading the boards and holding all hearts captive with your voice.  So I used to imagine myself slaying dragons.  So, only yesterday, I believed—­”

She sat erect with a shiver.  “To wake and find all your dreams changed to squalor, and for you no turning back!  Have you the strength, Emmy—­to go forward and change that squalor back again by sheer force into beautiful dreams?  Have you the strength?” She gazed at Emilia and added musingly, “No, you have not the strength.  You will stay on here in the cage, an obedient woman, your talent repressed to feed the future of those grand brothers of ours who take all we give, yet cannot help us one whit.  They take it innocently; they do not know; and they are dear good fellows.  But they cannot help.  I only have done what may injure them—­though I do not think it will:  and when father came along the path just now, he was thinking of them rather than of me—­of me only as I might injure them.”

She was right indeed.  Mr. Wesley had left the house thinking of her:  but a few steps had called up the faces of his sons, and by habit, since he thought of them always on his walks.  His studies put aside, to think of them was his one recreation.  Coming upon Hetty, he had felt himself taken at unawares, and retreated.