Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/259

quoting poor Lizzie’s parting injunction. “Suppose, after all, your voice breaks down again! Don’t think me a brute for saying so. However, I do believe that you have a great success before you. But what then? Will you be happy? No, I am sure you won’t. You care for me in your secret heart, I am sure you do; and yet you throw me over, just for the sake of singing old Piper’s music to a crowd at five shillings a head—a crowd who don’t care a straw for you yourself, only for what you can give them. I am not an artist—thank Heaven for that!—but I know more about it than you imagine.” There was a long pause again between them, and Campbell seemed to be trying to think of further arguments. But at last he exclaimed abruptly, “I can’t stand any more of this. It may be play with you, but it’s life and death with me. Tell me, once for all, will you trust me, or will you not? I can’t ask you again.”

Alice remained silent, pale and shaken. She could argue no longer, and a secret traitor in her heart was almost undoing the bolt and letting the enemy in. Arthur bent over towards her, his dark, manly face bright with an expression of tenderness which she had never seen before. If he could have taken her hand there and then, perhaps the battle had been won; but a large