y; his predictions were a pretence; he had not really
meant it at all, and she had been so simple as to believe everything.

"Oh!" she said, with the feeble, childish cry of one who has received a
pistol wound in battle. And then she rose and turned to go. But the stage
manager, who was laughing noisily out of his hot red face, stepped
between her and the door.

"My dear child, you can't mean--a trifle like that--!"

"Open the door, please," she said in her husky voice.

"But surely you don't intend--In this profession we think nothing, you
know----"

"Open the door, sir!"

"Really--upon my word----"

When she came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and
the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold,
and she was running along and crying like a disappointed child.

The bitterest part of it all was the crushing certainty that she had no
talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up
his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a
woman! Oh. the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a
girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by her looks!

With God knows what lingering remnant of expectation, but feeling broken
and beaten after her brave fight for life, and with the weak woman
uppermost at last, she had turned toward the hospital. It was nearly
half-past eleven when she got there, and Big Ben was chiming the half
hour as she ascended the steps. Bracing herself up, she looked in at the
porter's door with a face that was doing its best to smile.

"Any letters to-night, porter?"

"Not to-night, miss."

"No? Well--none to get, none to answer, you know. Happy New Year to you!"

But there was a sob in her laughter, and the man said: "I'd be sorry to
miss your face, nurse, but if you'll leave your address I'll send your
letters on and save you the journey so late at night."

"Oh, no-no, there'll be no more letters now, porter, and--I'll not come
again. Here!"

"No, no, miss."

"Yes, yes, you must."

She forced a shilling into the porter's hand in spite of his protests,
and then fled from the look in his face which seemed to her to say that
he would like to return her sixpence.

John Storm was lost to her. It was foolishness to go on expecting to hear
from him. Had he not told her that the rule under which the brothers
lived in community forbade them to write and receive letters except by
sp