Let us keep the secret while we can, for others' sakes, and so gain time for our own, if all is not lost--if you believe still that there's any hope.

Oh, save me, Ivor--somehow.

My whole life is in this." "Let your understudy take your part to-night, while we think, and work," I suggested.

"You cannot go to the theatre in this state." "For an actress there's no such word as 'cannot,'" she said bitterly.

"I could play a part to the finish, and crawl off the stage to die the next instant; yet no one would have guessed that I was dying.