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194 Nothing that I could do or say seemed able to procure for me an engagement in New York. Think of me for a moment now, Philip, as a woman absolutely and entirely devoted to her work. I loved it. It absorbed all my thoughts. It was just the one thing in life I cared anything about. I simply ached to get at New York, and I couldn't. All the time I had to play on tour, and you won't quite understand this, dear, but there is nothing so wearing in life as for any one with my cravings for recognition there to be always playing on the road."

She paused for a few minutes. There was a loud twittering of birds. A rabbit who had stolen carefully through the undergrowth scurried away. A car had come through the wood and swept past them, bringing with it some vague sense of disturbance. It was some little time before she settled down again to her story.

"At the end of those three years," she went on, "Sylvanus Power had become richer, stronger, more masterful than ever. I was beginning to lose heart. He was clever. He studied my every weakness. He knew quite well that with me there was only one way, and he laid his schemes with regard to me just in the same fashion as he schemed to be a conqueror of men, to build up those millions. We were playing near New York and one day he asked me to motor in there and lunch with him. I accepted. It was in the springtime, almost on such a day as this. We motored up in one of his wonderful cars. We lunched—I remember how shabby I felt—at the best restaurant in New York, where I was waited upon like a queen. Somehow or other, the man had always