ctress. She can't act much better off the stage than on. I
wouldn't trust her to create the part of the White Cat, let alone that
of Wily Vivien. She gets along all right if she can just keep still and
sulk and act the Stormy Petrel. I should have pulled her through on
those lines if she'd been obliged to play Jim Beckett's broken-hearted
fiancee. But to do the siren with your brother--no, she wouldn't be
equal to that, even to please me: couldn't get it across the footlights.
I had to win her to Brian as well as win Brian to me. I hope you don't
mind my calling him by his Christian name? He says I may."

"Why did you want to win Miss O'Farrell to my brother?"

"You don't know? You'll have to go down a place lower in this class! She
couldn't make Brian really like her, unless she liked him. At
first--though I knew better--she stuck it out that Brian was only a kind
of decoy duck for you with the Becketts----"

"Oh!"

"Please don't look at me as if you were biting a lemon. _I_ didn't think
so. And Dare doesn't now."

"How sweet of her!"

"She's turning sweet. That's partly what I was after. I wormed myself
into your brother's affections, to entice him to Paris. I wanted Dare to
learn that her _instinct_ about him was right; her instinct was always
defending him against what she thought was her reason and common sense.
Now, she sees that he's genuine, and she's secretly letting herself
go--admiring him and wondering at him to make up for her injustice."

"Are you telling all this to disarm me?"

"Not exactly. I'm telling you because I was sure you'd find out soon
what's going on, and because I thought an open policy best. As it is,
you can't say I haven't played fair from the word go."

"I wish," I cried out, "that the word _was_ 'go'!"

"You're not very kind, my dear."

"Why should I be kind?"

"Because I'm the stick of your rocket. You can't soar without me. And
because I love you such a lot."

"You!"

"Yes, I, me, Julian O'Farrell: Giulio di Napoli. Haven't I sacrificed my
prospects and my sister's prospects rather than throw you to the lions?
Didn't I waste those perfectly good snapshots? Didn't I sit tight,
protecting you silently, letting you have all I'd expected to have for
myself and Dare?"

I gasped. To speak was beyond my powers just then.

"I know what you'd like to say," Julian explained me to myself. "You'd
love to say: 'The d--d cheek of the man! It's _rich_!' Well, it is rich.
And _I_