hat 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.

"It is a night of endings," she murmured to herself. "Perhaps for me,"
she added, with a sudden wistful look out of the bare high window, "a
night of beginnings."

_Chapter III_

ANNA? OR ANNABEL?

Sir John was wholly unable to understand the laugh and semi-ironical
cheer which greeted his entrance to the smoking-room of the English
Club on the following evening. He stood upon the threshold, dangling
his eye-glasses in his fingers, stolid, imperturbable, mildly
interrogative. He wanted to know what the joke against him was--if
any.

"May I enquire," he asked smoothly, "in what way my appearance
contributes to your amusement? If there is a joke I should like to
share it."

A fair-haired young Englishman looked up from the depths of his easy
chair.

"You hear him?" he remarked, looking impressively around. "A joke!
Sir John, if you had presented yourself here an hour ago we should
have greeted you in pained silence. We had not then recovered from
thef shock. Our ideal had fallen. A sense of loss was amongst us.
Dru