Can
you imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms of a glorious
romantic past, basely deserted in the streets of a wholly strange,
superficial, material city of to-day? What do you think, Elizabeth, would
be your fate if, faint and famished, you begged for sustenance at an
English door to-day, and when asked your name and profession were to
reply, 'Elizabeth, Queen of England'?"
"Insane asylum," said Elizabeth, shortly.
"Precisely. So in Paris with the rest of us," said Cassandra.
"How do you know all this?" asked Trilby, still unconvinced.
"I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna," said Cassandra.
"I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent
detachable hypnotizer you had. I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind into
the future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy,
and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I doubt not,
still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. AEneas would not have
grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride on the
opening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by Virgil."
"I never heard about that," said Trilby. "It sounds like a very funny
story, though."
"Well, it wasn't so humorous for some as it was for others," said
Cassandra, with a sly glance at Helen.
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