It must be hard luck to work for fame and then
be cheated out of it, as was the man in the tale; but I suppose it
sometimes happens, although, for the honesty of human nature, I hope
not very often."
"Did you act under your own name, or did you follow the fashion so many
of the profession adopt?" asked the girl, evidently interested when he
spoke of the theatre.
The young man laughed for, perhaps, the first time on the voyage. "Oh,"
he answered, "I was not at all noted. I acted only in minor parts, and
always under my own name, which, doubtless, you have never heard--it is
Sidney Ormond."
"What!" cried the girl in amazement; "not Sidney Ormond the African
traveller?"
The young man turned his wan face and large, melancholy eyes upon his
questioner.
"I am certainly Sidney Ormond, an African traveller, but I don't think
I deserve the 'the,' you know. I don't imagine anyone has heard of me
through my travelling any more than through my acting."
"The Sidney Ormond I mean," she said, "went through Africa without
firing a shot; whose book, _A Mission of Peace_, has been such a
success, both in England and America. But, of course, you cannot be he;
for I remember that Sidney Ormond is now lecturing in England to
tremendous audiences all over the country.
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