“This is just absurd, old girl;”—­she shrank—­“you really are mad.  Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts.  Why, I’m just what I always was to you—­your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend.  I’ll talk it all over with you later.  It’s impossible now.  They’re ready for you in the ball-room.  The accompanist is waiting.  Do, do, do be reasonable.  I will see you—­afterwards—­late.”

A determined poignant look came into her eyes.  She drew still farther away from him.  “You will not, you shall not, see me ‘afterwards—­late.’  No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now.  I am natural, I am true, I hide nothing.  I take my courage in both hands.  I do not hide my head in the sands.  I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make no presences to myself.  I answer to myself, and I do not play false with the world or with you.  Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears.  But you—­oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you!  Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is here”—­she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart—­“and I will not act as though it wasn’t here.  I’m not of this world.”

She waved a hand towards the ball-room.  “I am not of the world that lives in terror of itself.  Mine is a world apart, where one acts and lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others—­all unreal, unreal.  The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in our own lives, but to be true—­real and true.  For one’s own life as well as one’s work to be all grease-paint—­no, no, no.  I have hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven’t acted, or pretended.  I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin—­”

“The sin of an angel—­”

She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more from the tone.  Why had it not all seemed insincere before?

“But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were,” she continued.

“And you don’t believe it now?”

“To-night I do not.  What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell.  Maybe I shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds or bodies.”  She threw up her hands with a despairing helplessness.  “But we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go back to London.  I am going to my room now.  You may tell Mrs. Byng that I am not well enough to sing—­and indeed I am not well,” she added, huskily.  “I am sick at heart with I don’t know what; but I am wretched and angry and dangerous—­and bad.”

Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom.  “Where is Mr. Byng?” she added, sharply.  “Why was he not at dinner?”

He hailed the change of idea gladly.  He spoke quickly, eagerly.  “He was kept at the mine.  There’s trouble—­a strike.  He was needed.  He has great influence with the men, and the masters, too.  You heard Mrs. Byng say why he had not returned.”