The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays Part 23

"We shall love you just the same!" cried impulsive Alice.

"Don't be too sure. But I feel that I must tell some one. I have borne all I can alone. It is getting to the point where I fear I shall scream my secret to the cameras--or some one!"

Then Estelle had a secret!

"Do tell us. Perhaps we can help you--or perhaps my father can,"

suggested Ruth.

"I don't believe any one can help me," said Estelle. "But at least it will be a relief to tell it. I--I am living under false pretenses!" she blurted out desperately.

"False pretenses!" repeated Alice. At once her mind flashed back to Miss Dixon's ring. Was it the taking of this that Estelle was hinting at? The girl must have guessed what was in the mind of her hearers, for she hastened to add:

"Oh, it isn't anything disgraceful. It's just a misfortune. You remember you have been asking me where I learned to ride--whether I didn't use to live on a ranch--questions like that. Well, you must have noticed that I didn't answer."

"Yes, we did notice, and we spoke about it," said truthful Ruth.

"We thought you didn't wish to tell," added Alice.

"Wish to tell! Oh, my dears, I would have been only too glad to tell if I could."

"Why can't you?" asked Ruth. "Are you bound by some vow of secrecy? Is it dangerous for you to reveal the past?"

"No, it is simply impossible!"

"Impossible!" the two sisters exclaimed.

"Yes, I can no more tell you what life I lived, where I lived, who I was, or what I was doing, up to a time of about three or four years ago, than I can fly."

"Why not?" asked Alice, puzzled.

"Because the past--up to the time I named--is a perfect blank to me. My mind refuses absolutely to tell me who I was or where I lived--who my people were--anything of the past. My mind is like a blank sheet of paper. I can remember nothing. Oh, isn't it awful!" and she burst into tears.

CHAPTER XVIII

"WHAT CAN WE DO?"

"You poor dear!" cried Alice, and she knelt down on the floor beside Estelle and put her arms about the weeping girl. Ruth, too, with an expression of sympathy, stroked the bowed head.

"We want so much to help you," Ruth murmured.

"Let me get you something," begged Alice. "Some smelling salts--some ammonia--shall I call any one--the doctor----?"

"No, I--I'll be all right presently," said Estelle in a broken voice.

"Just let me alone a little while--I mean stay with me--talk to me--tell me something. I want to get control of my nerves."

Ruth did not seem to know what to say, but Alice pulled a small bottle from her pocket, and held it under Estelle's nose.

"It's the loveliest new scent," she said. "I bought a sample in town."

Estelle burst into a laugh, rather a hysterical laugh, it is true, but a laugh nevertheless. It showed that the strain and tension were relaxing to some extent.

"Isn't it sweet?" Alice asked.

"It is, dear. Let me smell it again. It makes me feel better," and Estelle breathed in deep of the odorous scent.

"How silly I was to give way like that," she went on. "But I simply couldn't help it. This has been going on for so long, and it got so I couldn't stand it another minute. How would you like it not to know who you are?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid," said Ruth, softly.

"That, in a way, is why it has been such a relief to be in the moving pictures," Estelle went on. "I could be so many different characters, and, at times, I thought perhaps, by chance, I might be cast for the very part I have lost--cast for my real self, as it were."

"You must have had a hard time," said Alice.

"I haven't told you half the story yet," Estelle went on. "Would you like to hear the rest?"

"Indeed we would!" exclaimed Ruth. "Not from any idle curiosity, but because we want to help you."

"And I do need some one to help me," murmured Estelle. "I am all alone in the world."

"You must have relatives somewhere!" insisted Alice.

"None that I ever heard of. But then, who knows what might have happened in the life that is a blank to me--in the life that lies beyond that impenetrable wall of the past?

"But I mustn't get hysterical again. Just let me think for a moment, so I may tell you my story clearly. I shall be all right in a moment or two."

"Let me make you a cup of tea," proposed Ruth. "I'll make some for all of us," and presently the little kettle was steaming over the spirit lamp, and the girls were sipping the fragrant beverage.

"Thank you. That was good!" murmured Estelle. "I feel better now. I'll tell the rest of my miserable story to you."

"Don't make it too miserable," and Alice tried to make her laugh a gay one.

"I won't--not any more so than I can help. I think it will do me good to let you share the mystery with me."

"Then it is a mystery?" asked Ruth.

"Somewhat, yes. You may think it strange, but I can not think back more than three years--four at the most. I am not at all certain of the time.

But go back as far as I can, all I remember is that I was on a large steamer."

"On the ocean?" asked Alice.

"No, on the Great Lakes. I was going to Cleveland, which I learned when I asked one of the officers."

"And didn't you know where you were going before you asked?" Ruth questioned.