enth of your talent getting all the bookings
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that should be yours - and worse! all the fame.'' He stood, and placed his hands upon Kitty''s shoulders. ''You are on the very edge of stardom,'' he said, giving her a little push so that she had to grasp his arms to stop herself from falling. There must be something, something that we can do to just propel you over - something we can add to your act to set it apart from that of all those other prancing schoolgirls!''
But, however hard we worked, we could not find it; and meanwhile Kitty continued at the lesser theatres, in the humbler districts - Islington, Marylebone, Battersea, Peckham, Hackney - circling Leicester Square, crossing the West End on her nightly trips from hall to hall, but never entering those palaces of her and Walter''s dreams: the Alhambra, and the Empire.
To be honest, I didn''t much mind. I was sorry, for Kitty''s sake, that her great new London career was not quite so great as she had hoped for; but I was also, privately, relieved. I knew how clever and charming and lovely she was, and while a part of me wanted, like Walter, to share the knowledge with the world, a greater part longed only to hug it to myself, to keep it secret and secure. For I was sure that, were she truly famous, I would lose her. I didn''t like it when her fans sent flowers, or clamoured at the stage door for photographs and kisses; more fame would bring more flowers, more kisses - and I could not believe that she would go on laughing at the gentlemen''s invitations, could not believe that one day, amongst all those admiring girls, there wouldn''t be one she would like better then me . . .