There was a curious stricken expression on the face Diana turned towards him.

"So that was it!"

"Yes, that was it. I tried to put you out of my life, for I'd no right to ask you into it. And I've failed! I can't do without you"—his voice gathered intensity—"I want you—body and soul I want you. And yet—a secret between husband and wife is a burden no man should ask a woman to bear."

When next Diana spoke it was in a curiously cold, collected voice. She felt stunned. A great wall seemed to be rising up betwixt herself and Max; all her golden visions for the future were falling about her in ruins.

"You are right," she said slowly. "No man should ask—that—of his wife."

Errington's face twisted with pain.

"I never meant to let you know I cared," he answered. "I fought down my love for you just because of that. And then—it grew too strong for me. . . . My God! If you knew what it's been like—to be near you, with you, constantly, and yet to feel that you were as far removed from me as the sun itself. Diana—beloved—can't you trust me over this one thing? Isn't your love strong enough for that?"

She turned on him passionately.

"Oh, you are unfair to me—cruelly unfair! You ask me to trust you! And your very asking implies that you cannot trust me!"

There was bitter anger in her voice.

"I know it looks like that," he said wearily. "And I can't explain. I can only ask you to believe in me and trust me. I thought . . . perhaps . . . you loved me enough to do it." His mouth twitched with a little smile, half sad, half ironical. "My usual presumption, I suppose."

She made no answer, but after a moment asked abruptly:—

"Does this—this secret concern only you?"

"That I cannot tell you. I can't answer any questions. If—if you come to me, it must be in absolute blind trust." He paused, his eyes entreating her. "Is it . . . too much to ask?"

Diana was silent, looking away from him across the water. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and a grey shadow spread like a blight over the summer sea. It lay leaden and dull, tufted with little white crests of foam.

The man and woman stood side by side, motionless, unresponsive. It was as though a sword had suddenly descended, cleaving them asunder.

Presently she heard him mutter in a low tone of anguish:—

"So this—this, too—must be added to the price!"

The pain in his voice pulled at her heart. She stretched out her hands towards him.

"Max! Give me time!"

He wheeled round, and the tense look of misery in his face hurt her almost physically.

"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.

"I must have time to think. Husband and wife ought to be one. What—what happiness can there be if . . . if we marry . . . like this?"

He bent his head.

"None—unless you can have faith. There can be no happiness for us without that."

He took a sudden step towards her.

"Oh, my dear, my dear! I love you so!"

Diana began to cry softly—helpless, pathetic, weeping, like a child's.

"And—and I thought we were so happy," she sobbed. "Now it's all spoiled and broken. And you've spoilt it!"

"Don't!" he said unsteadily. "Don't cry like that. I can't stand it."

He made an instinctive movement to take her in his arms, but she slipped aside, turning on him in sudden, passionate reproach.

"Why did you try and make me love you when you knew . . . all this? I was quite happy before you came—oh, so happy!"—with a sudden yearning recollection of the days of unawakened girlhood. "If—if you had let me alone, I should have been happy still."

The unthinking selfishness of youth rang in her voice, asserting its infinite demand for the joy and pleasure of life.

"And I?" he said, very low. "Does my unhappiness count for nothing? I'm paying too. God knows, I wish we had never met."

Never to have met! Not to have known all that those months of friendship and a single hour of love had held! The words brought a sudden awakening to Diana—a new, wonderful knowledge that, cost what they might in bitterness and future pain, she would rather bear the cost than know her life emptied of those memories.

She had ceased crying. After a few moments she spoke with a gentle, wistful composure.

"I was wrong, Max. You're not to blame—you couldn't help it any more than I could."

"I might have gone away—kept away from you," he said tonelessly.

A faint, wintry little smile curved her lips.

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Diana!" He sprang forward impetuously. "Do you mean that?"

She nodded slowly.

"Yes. Even if—if we can't ever marry, we've had . . . to-day."

A smouldering fire lit itself in the man's blue eyes. He had spoken but the bare truth when he had said that warmer blood ran in his veins than that of the cold northern peoples.

"Yes," he said, his voice tense. "We've had to-day."

Diana trembled a little. The memory of that fierce, wild love-making of his rushed over her once more, and the primitive woman in her longed to yield to its mastery. But the cooler characteristics of her nature bade her pause and weigh the full significance of marrying a man whose life was tinged with mystery, and who frankly acknowledged that he bore a secret which must remain hidden, even from his wife.

It would be taking a leap in the dark, and Diana shrank from it.

"I must have time to think," she repeated. "I can't decide to-day."

"No," he said, "you're right. I've known that all the time, only—only"—his voice shook—"the touch of you, the nearness of you, blinded me." He paused. "Don't keep me waiting for your answer longer than you can help, Diana," he added, with a quiet intensity.

"You'll go away from Crailing?" she asked nervously.

He smiled a little sadly.

"Yes, I'll go away. I'll leave you quite free to make your decision," he replied.

She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew that if he were to remain at Crailing, if they were to continue seeing each other almost daily, there could be but one end to the matter—her conviction that no happiness could result from such a marriage would go by the board. It could not stand against the breathless impetuosity of Max's love-making—not when her own heart was eager and aching to respond.

"Thank you, Max," she said simply, extending her hand.

He put it aside, drawing her into his embrace.

"Beloved," he said, and now there was no passion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please God you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh! little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you could give. Love isn't all passion. It's tenderness and shielding and service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity."

He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment. Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.



CHAPTER XV

DIANA'S DECISION

Max had been gone a week—a week of distress and miserable indecision for Diana, racked as she was between her love and her conviction that marriage under the only circumstances possible would inevitably bring unhappiness. Over and above this fear there was the instinctive recoil she felt from Errington's demand for such blind faith. Her pride rebelled against it. If he loved her and had confidence in her, why couldn't he trust her with his secret? It was treating her like a child, and it would be wrong—all wrong—she argued, to begin their married life with concealment and secrecy for its foundation.

One morning she even wrote to him, telling him definitely either that he must trust her altogether, or that they must part irrevocably. But the letter was torn up the same afternoon, and Diana went to bed that night with her decision still untaken.

For several nights she had slept but little, and once again she passed long hours tossing feverishly from side to side of the bed or pacing up and down her room, love and pride fighting a stubborn battle within her. Had Max remained at Crailing, love would have gained an easy victory, but, true to his promise, he had gone away, leaving her to make her decision free and untrammelled by his influence.

Diana's face was beginning to show signs of the mental struggle through which she was passing. Dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, and her cheeks, even in so short a time, had hollowed a little. She was irritable, too, and unlike herself, and at last Stair, whose watchful eyes had noted all these things, though he had refrained from comment, taxed her with keeping him outside her confidence.

"Can't I help, Di?" he asked, laying his hand on her shoulder, and twisting her round so that she faced him.

The quick colour flew into her cheeks. For a moment she hesitated, while Stair, releasing his hold of her, dropped into a chair and busied himself filling and lighting his pipe.

"Well?" he queried at last, smiling whimsically. "Won't you give me an old friend's right to ask impertinent questions?"

Impulsively she yielded.

"You needn't, Pobs. I'll tell you all about it."

When she had finished, a long silence ensued. Not that Stair was in any doubt as to what form his advice should take—idealist that he was, there did not seem to him to be any question in the matter. He only hesitated as to how he could best word his counsel.

At last he spoke, very gently, his eyes lit with that inner radiance which gave such an arresting charm of expression to his face.

"My dear," he said, "it seems to me that if you love him you needs must trust him. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.'"

Diana shook her head.

"Mightn't you reverse that, Pobs, and say that he would trust me—if he loves me?"

"No, not necessarily." Alan sucked at his pipe. "He knows what his secret is, and whether it is right or wrong for you to share it. You haven't that knowledge. And that's where your trust must come in. You have to believe in him enough to leave it to him to decide whether you ought to be told or not. Have you no confidence in his judgment?"

"I don't think husbands and wives should have secrets from one another," protested Diana obstinately.

"Does he propose to have any other than this one?"

"No."

"Then I don't see that you need complain. The present and the future are yours, but you've no right to demand the past as well. And this secret, whatever it may be, belongs to the past."

"As far as I can see it will be cropping up in the future as well," said Diana ruefully. "It seems to be a 'continued in our next' kind of mystery."

Stair laughed boyishly.

"It should add a zest to life if that's the case," he retorted.

Diana was silent a moment. Then she said suddenly:—

"Pobs, what am I to do?"

Instantly Stair became grave again.

"My dear, do you love him?"

Diana nodded, her eyes replying.

"Then nothing else matters a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what it looks like?"

She regarded him questioningly.

"It looks as though you suspected the secret of being a disgraceful one—something of which Max is ashamed to tell you. Do you"—sharply—"think that?"

"Of course I don't!" she burst out indignantly.

"Then why trouble? Possibly the matter concerns some one else besides himself, and he may not be at liberty to tell you anything—he might have a dozen different reasons for keeping his own counsel. And the woman who loves him and is ready to be his wife is the first to doubt and, distrust him! Diana, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If my wife"—his voice shook a little—-"had ever doubted me—no matter how black things might have looked against me—I think it would have broken my heart."

Diana's head drooped lower and lower as he spoke, and presently her hand stole out, seeking his. In a moment it was taken and held in a close and kindly clasp.

"I'll—I'll marry him, Pobs," she whispered.

So it came about that when, two days later, Max took his way to 24 Brutton Square, the gods had better gifts in store for him than he had dared to hope.

He was pacing restlessly up and down her little sitting-room when she entered it, and she could see that his face bore traces of the last few days' anxiety. There were new lines about his mouth, and his eyes were so darkly shadowed as to seem almost sunken in their sockets.

"You have come back!" he said, stepping eagerly towards her. "Diana"—there was a note of strain in his voice—"which is it? Yes—or no?"

She held out her hands.

"It's—it's 'yes,' Max."

A stifled exclamation broke from him, almost like a sob. He folded her in his arms and laid his lips to hers.

"My beloved! . . . Oh, Diana, if you could guess the agony—the torture of the last ten days!" And he leaned his cheek against her hair, and stood silently for a little space.

Presently fear overcame him again—quick fear lest she should ever regret having given herself to him.

"Heart's dearest, have you realised that it will be very hard sometimes? You will ask me to explain things—and I shan't be able to. Is your trust big enough—great enough for this?"

Diana raised her head from his shoulder.

"I love you," she answered steadily.

"Do you forget the shadow? It is there still, dogging my steps. Not even your love can alter that."

For a moment Diana rose to the heights of her womanhood.

"If there must be a shadow," she said, "we will walk in it together."

"But—don't you see?—I shall know what it is. To you it will always be something unknown, hidden, mysterious. Child! Child! I wonder if I am right to let you join your life to mine!"

But Diana only repeated:—

"I love you."

And at last he flung all thoughts of warning and doubt aside, and secure in that reiterated "I love you!" yielded to the unutterable joy of the moment.



CHAPTER XVI

BARONI'S OPINION OF MATRIMONY

"Per Dio! What is this you tell me? That you are to be married? . . . My dear Mees Quentin, please put all such thoughts of foolishness out of your mind. You are consecrated to art. The young man must find another bride."

It was thus that Carlo Baroni received the news of Diana's engagement—at first with unmitigated horror, then sweeping it aside as though it were a matter of no consequence whatever.

Diana laughed, dimpling with amusement at the maestro's indignation. Now that she had given her faith, refusing to allow anything to stand between her and Max, she was so supremely happy that she felt she could afford to laugh at such relatively small obstacles as would be raised by her old singing-master.

"I'm afraid the 'young man' wouldn't agree to that," she returned gaily. "He would say you must find another pupil."

Baroni surveyed her with anxiety.

"You are not serious?" he queried at last.

"Indeed I am. I'm actually engaged—now, at this moment—and we propose to get married before Christmas."

"But it is impossible! Giusto Cielo! But impossible!" reiterated the old man. "Mees Quentin, you cannot haf understood. Perhaps, in my anxiety that you should strain every nerve to improve, I haf not praised you enough—and so you haf not understood. Leesten, then. You haf a voice than which there is not one so good in the whole of Europe. It is superb—marvellous—the voice of the century. With that voice you will haf the whole world at your feet; before long you will command almost fabulous fees, and more, far more than this, you can interpret the music of the great masters as they themselves would wish to hear it. Me, Baroni, I know it. And you would fling such possibilities, such a career, aside for mere matrimony! It is nonsense, I tell you, sheer nonsense!"

He paused for breath, and Diana laid her hand deprecatingly on his arm.

"Dear Maestro," she said, "it's good of you to tell me all this, and—and you mustn't think for one moment that I ever forget all you've done for me. It's you who've made my voice what it is. But there isn't the least reason why I should give up singing because I'm going to be married. I don't intend to, I assure you."

"I haf no doubt you mean well. But I haf heard other young singers say the same thing, and then the husband—the so English husband!—he objects to his wife's appearing in public, and presto! . . . Away goes the career! No singer should marry until she is well established in her profession. You are young. Marry in ten years' time and you shall haf my blessing."

"I shall want your blessing sooner than that," laughed Diana. "But I'm not marrying a 'so English husband'! He's only partly English, and he's quite willing for me to go on singing."

Baroni regarded her seriously.

"Is that so? Good! Then I will talk to the young man, so that he may realise that he is not marrying just Mees Diana Quentin, but a voice—a heaven-bestowed voice. What is his name?"

"You know him," she answered smilingly. "It's Max Errington."

She was utterly unprepared for the effect of her words. Baroni's face darkened like a stormy sky, and his eyes literally blazed at her from beneath their penthouse of shaggy brow.

"Max Errington! Donnerwetter! But that is the worst of all!"

Diana stared, at him in mute amazement, and, despite herself, her heart sank with a sudden desperate apprehension. What did it mean? Why should the mere mention of Max's name have roused the old maestro to such a fever of indignation?

Presently Baroni turned to her again, speaking more composedly, although little sparks of anger still flickered in his eyes ready to leap into flame at the slightest provocation.

"I haf met Mr. Errington. He is a charming man. But if you marry him, my dear Mees Quentin—good-bye to your career as a world-artiste, good-bye to the most marvellous voice that the good God has ever let me hear."

"I don't see why. Max thoroughly understands professional life."

"Nevertheless, believe me, there will—there must come a time when Max Errington's wife will not be able to appear before the world as a public singer. I who speak, I know."

Diana flashed round upon him suddenly.

"You—you know his secret?"

"I know it."

So, then, the secret which must be hidden from his wife was yet known to Carlo Baroni! Diana felt her former resentment surge up anew within her. It was unfair—shamefully unfair for Max to treat her in this way! It was making a mockery of their love.

Baroni's keen old eyes read the conflict of emotions in her face, and he laid his finger unerringly upon the sore spot. His one idea was to prevent Diana from marrying, to guard her—as he mentally phrased it—for the art he loved so well, and he was prepared to stick at nothing that might aid his cause.

"So he has not told you?" he said slowly. "Do you not think it strange of him?"

Diana's breast rose and fell tumultuously. Baroni was turning the knife in the wound with a vengeance.

"Maestro, tell me,"—her voice came unevenly—"tell me. Is it"—she turned her head away—"is it a . . . shameful . . . secret?"

Inwardly she loathed herself for asking such a thing, but the words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.

Baroni hesitated. All his hopes and ambitions centred round Diana and her marvellous voice. He had given of his best to train it to its present perfection, and now he saw the fruit of his labour about to be snatched from him. It was more than human nature could endure. Errington meant nothing to him, Diana and her voice everything; and he was prepared to sacrifice no matter whom to secure her career as an artiste. By implication he sacrificed Errington.

"It is not possible for me to say more. But be advised, my dear pupil. Out of my great love for you I say it—let Max Errington go his way."

And with those words—sinister, warning—ringing in her ears, Diana returned to Brutton Square.

But Baroni was not content to let matters remain as they stood, trusting that his warning would do its work. He was determined to leave no stone unturned, and he forthwith sought out Errington in his own house and deliberately broached the subject of his engagement to Diana.

Max greeted him affectionately.

"It's a long while since you honoured me with a visit," he said, shaking hands. "I suppose"—laughingly—"you come to congratulate me?"

The old man shook his head.

"Far from it. I haf come to ask you to give her up."

"To give her up?" repeated Max, in undisguised amazement.

"Yes. Mees Quentin is not for marriage. She is dedicated to Art."

Max smiled indulgently.

"To Art? Yes. But she's for me, too, thank God! Dear old friend, you need not look so anxious and concerned. I've no wish to interfere with Diana's professional work. You shall have her voice"—smiling—"I'll be content to hold her heart."

But there was no answering smile on Baroni's lips.

"Does she know—everything?" he asked sternly.

Max shook his head.

"No. How could she? . . . You must realise the impossibility of that," he answered slowly.

"And you think it right to let her marry you in ignorance?"

Max hesitated. Then—

"She trusts me," he said at last.

"Pish! For how long? . . . When she sees daily under her eyes things that she cannot explain, unaccountable things, how long will she remain satisfied, I ask you? And then will begin unhappiness."

Errington stiffened.

"And what has our—supposititious—unhappiness to do with you, Signor Baroni?" he asked haughtily.

"Your unhappiness? Nothing. It is the price you must pay—your inheritance. But hers? Everything. Tears, fretting, vexation—and that beautiful voice, that perfect organ, may be impaired. Think! Think what you are doing! Just for your own personal happiness you are risking the voice of the century, the voice that will give pleasure to tens of thousands—to millions. You are committing a crime against Art."

Max smiled in spite of himself.

"Truly, Maestro, I had not thought of it like that," he admitted. "But I think her faith in me will carry us through," he added confidently.

"Never! Never! Women are not made like that."

"And perhaps, later on, if things go well, I shall be able to tell her all."

"And much good that will do! Diavolo! When the time comes that things go well—if it ever does come—"

"It will. It shall," said Max firmly.

"Well, if it does—I ask you, can she then continue her life as an artiste?"

Max reflected.

"Yes, if I remain in England—which I hope to do. I counted on that when I asked her to marry me. I think I shall be able to arrange it."

"If! If! Are you going to hang your wife's happiness upon an 'if'?" Baroni spoke with intense anger. "And 'if' you cannot remain in England, if you haf to go back—there? Can your wife still appear as a public singer?"

"No," acknowledged Max slowly. "I suppose not."

"No! Her career will be ruined. And all this is the price she will haf to pay for her—trust! Give it up, give it up—set her free."

Max flung himself into a chair, leaning his arms wearily on the table, and stared straight in front of him, his eyes dark with pain.

"I can't," he said, in a low voice. "Not now. I meant to—I tried to—but now she has promised and I can't let her go. Good God, Maestro!"—a sudden ring of passion in his tones—"Must I give up everything? Am I to have nothing in the world? Always to be a tool and never live an individual man's life of my own?"

Baroni's face softened a little.

"One cannot escape one's destiny," he said sadly. "Che sara sara. . . . But you can spare—her. Tell her the truth, and in common fairness let her judge for herself—not rush blindfold into such a web."

Max shook his head.

"You know I can't do that," he replied quietly.

Baroni threw out his arms in despair.

"I would tell her the whole truth myself—but for the memory of one who is dead." Sudden tears dimmed the fierce old eyes. "For the sake of that sainted martyr—martyr in life as well as in death—I will hold my peace."

A half-sad, half-humorous smile flashed across Errington's face.

"We're all of us martyrs—more or less," he observed drily.

"And you wish to add Mees Quentin to the list?" retorted Baroni. "Well, I warn you, I shall fight against it. I will do everything in my power to stop this marriage."

Max shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm sure you will," he said, smiling faintly. "But—forgive me, Maestro—I don't think you will succeed."

As soon as Baroni had taken his departure, Max called a taxi, and hurried off to see Adrienne de Gervais. He had arranged to talk over with her a certain scene in the play he was now writing for her, and which was to be produced early in the New Year.

Adrienne welcomed him good-humouredly.

"A little late," she observed, glancing at the clock. "But I suppose one must not expect punctuality when a man's in love."

"I know I'm late, but I can assure you"—with a grim smile—"love had little enough to do with it."

Adrienne looked up sharply, struck by the bitter note in his voice.

"Then what had?" she asked. "What has gone wrong, Max? You look fagged out."

"Baroni has been round to see me—to ask me to break off my engagement." He laughed shortly.

"He doesn't approve, I suppose?"

"That's a mild way of expressing his attitude."

Adrienne was silent a moment. Then she spoke, slowly, consideringly.

"I don't—approve—either. It isn't right, Max."

He bit his lip.

"So you—you, too, are against me?"

She stretched out her hand impulsively.

"Not against you, Max! Never that! How could I be? . . . But I don't think you're being quite fair to Diana. You ought to tell her the truth."

He wheeled round.

"No one knows better than you how impossible that is."

"Don't you trust her then—the woman you're asking to be your wife?"

The tinge of irony in her voice brought a sudden light of anger to his eyes.

"That's not very just of you, Adrienne," he said coldly. "I would trust her with my life. But I have no right to pledge the trust of others—and that's what I should be doing if I told her. We have our duty—you and I—and all this . . . is part of it."

Adrienne hesitated.

"Couldn't you—ask the others to release you?"

He shook his head.

"What right have I to ask them to trust an Englishwoman with their secret—just for my pleasure?"

"For your happiness," corrected Adrienne softly.

"Or for my happiness? My happiness doesn't count with them one straw."

"It does with me. I don't see why she shouldn't be told. Baroni knows, and Olga—you have to trust them."

"Baroni will be silent for the sake of the dead, and Olga out of her love—or fear"—with a bitter smile—"of me."

"And wouldn't Diana, too, be silent for your sake?"

"My dear Adrienne"—a little irritably—"Englishwomen are so frank—so indiscreetly trusting. That's where the difficulty lies, and I dare not risk it. There's too much at stake. But can you imagine any agent they may have put upon our track surprising her knowledge out of Olga?" He laughed contemptuously. "I fancy not! If Olga hadn't been a woman she'd have made her mark in the Diplomatic Service."

"Yet what is there to make her keep faith with us?" said Adrienne doubtfully. "She is poor—"

"Her own doing, that!"

"True, but the fact remains. And those others would pay a fortune for the information she could give. Besides, I believe she frankly hates me."

"Possibly. But she would never, I think, allow her personal feelings to override everything else. After all, she was one of us—is still, really, though she would gladly disown the connection."

"Well, when you've looked at every side of the matter, we only come back to the same point. I think you're acting wrongly. You're letting Diana pledge herself blindly, when you're not free to give her the confidence a man should give his wife—when you don't even know—yet—how it may all end."

Almost Baroni's very words! Max winced.

"No. I don't know how it will end, as you say. But surely there will come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?"

Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully.

"If your conscience ever lets you," she said.

There was a long silence. Presently she resumed:—-

"I never thought, when you first told me about your engagement, that the position of affairs need make any difference. I was so pleased to think that you cared for each other! And now—where will it all end? How many lives are going to be darkened by the same shadow? Oh, it's terrible, Max, terrible!"

The tears filled her eyes.

"Don't!" said Max unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough. Perhaps you're right—I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose I was wrong—I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before God, Adrienne! I can't, give her up—not now!"



CHAPTER XVII

"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER"

Max and Diana were married shortly before the following Christmas. The wedding took place very quietly at Crailing, only a few intimate friends being asked to it. For, as Max pointed out, either their invitations must be limited to a dozen or so, or else Diana must resign herself to a fashionable wedding in town, with all the world and his wife as guests at the subsequent reception. No middle course is possible when a well-known dramatist elects to marry the latest sensation in the musical world!

So it was in the tiny grey church overlooking the sea that Max and Diana were made one, with the distant murmur of the waves in their ears, and with Alan Stair to speak the solemn words that joined their lives together, and when the little intimate luncheon which followed the ceremony was over, they drove away in Max's car to the wild, beautiful coast of Cornwall, there to spend the first perfect days of their married life.

And they were perfect days! Afterwards, when clouds had dimmed the radiance of the sun, and doubts and ugly questionings were beating up on every side, Diana had always that radiant fortnight by the Cornish sea—she and Max alone together—to look back upon.

The woman whose married life holds sorrow, and who has no such golden memory stored away, is bereft indeed!

On their return to London, the Erringtons established themselves at Lilac Lodge, a charming old-fashioned house in Hampstead, where the creeper-clad walls and great bushes of lilac reminded Diana pleasantly of the old Rectory at Crailing. Jerry made one of the household—"resident secretary" as he proudly termed himself, and his cheery, good-humoured presence was invaluable whenever difficulties arose.

But at first there were few, indeed, of the latter to contend with. Owing to the illness of an important member of the cast, without whose services Adrienne declined to perform, the production of Max's new play, "Mrs. Fleming's Husband," was delayed until the autumn. This postponement left him free to devote much more of his time to his wife than would otherwise have been possible, and for the first few months after their marriage it seemed as though no shadow could ever fall athwart their happiness.

In this respect Baroni's prognostications of evil had failed to materialise, but his fears that marriage would interfere with Diana's musical career were better founded. Quite easily and naturally she slipped out of the professional life which had just been opening its doors to her. She felt no inclination to continue singing in public. Max filled her existence, and although she still persevered with her musical training under Baroni, she told him with a frank enjoyment of the situation that she was far too happy and enjoying herself far too much to have any desire at present to take up the arduous work of a public singer!

Baroni was immeasurably disappointed, and not all Diana's assurances that in a year, or two at most, she would go back into harness once more sufficed to cheer him.

"A year—two years!" he exclaimed. "Two years lost at the critical time—just at the commencement of your career! Ah, my dear Mrs. Errington, you had better haf lost four years later on when you haf established yourself."

To Max himself the old maestro was short and to the point when chance gave him the opportunity of a few moments alone with him.

"You haf stolen her from me, Max Errington—you haf broken your promise that she should be free to sing."

Max responded good-humouredly:—

"She is free, Maestro, free to do exactly as she chooses. And she has chosen—to be my wife, to live for a time the pleasant, peaceful life that ordinary, everyday folk may live, who are not rushed hither and thither at the call of a career. Can you honestly say she hasn't chosen the better part?"

Baroni was silent.

"Don't grudge her a year or two of freedom," pursued Max. "You know, you old slave-driver, you,"—laughing—"that it is only because you want her for your beloved Art—because you want her voice! Otherwise you would rejoice in her happiness."

"And you—what is it you want?" retorted Baroni, unappeased. "You want her soul! Whereas I would give her soul wings that she might send it singing forth into an enraptured world."

But Baroni's words fell upon stony ground, and Max and Diana went their way, absorbed in one another and in the wonderful happiness which love had brought them.

Thus spring slipped away into summer, and the season was in full swing when fate tossed the first pebble into their unruffled pool of joy.

It was only a brief paragraph, sandwiched in between the musical notes of a morning paper, to which Olga Lermontof, who came daily to Lilac Lodge to practise with Diana, drew the latter's attention. The paragraph recalled the fact that it was just a year since Miss Quentin had made her debut, and then went on to comment lightly upon the brief and meteoric character of her professional appearances.

"Domesticity should not have claimed Miss Quentin"—so ran the actual words. "Hers was a voice the like of which we may not hear again, and the public grudges its withdrawal. A propos, we had always thought (until circumstances proved us hopelessly wrong) that the fortunate man, whose gain has been such a loss to the musical world, seemed born to write plays for a certain charming actress—and she to play the part which he assigned her."

Diana showed the paragraph to Max, who frowned as he read it, and finally tore the newspaper in which it had appeared across and across, flinging the pieces into the grate.

Then he turned and laid his hands on Diana's shoulders, gazing searchingly into her face.

"Have you felt—anything of what that paragraph suggests?" he demanded. "Am I taking too much from you, Diana? I love to keep you to myself—not to have to share you with the world, but I won't stand in your light, or hold you back if you wish to go—not even"—with a wry smile—"if it should mean your absence on a tour."

"Silly boy!" Diana patted his head reprovingly. "I don't want to sing in public—at least, not now, not yet. Later on, I dare say, I shall like to take it up again. And as for leaving you and going on tour"—laughingly—"the latter half of the paragraph should serve as a warning to me not to think of such a thing!"

To her surprise Max did not laugh with her. Instead, he answered coldly:—

"I hope you have more sense than to pay attention to what any damned newspaper may have to say about me—or about Miss de Gervais either."

"Why, Max,—Max—"

Diana stared at him in dismay, flushing a little. It was the first time he had spoken harshly to her since their marriage.

In an instant he had caught her in his arms, passionately repentant.

"Dearest, forgive me! It was only—only that you are bound to read such things, and it angered me for a moment. Miss de Gervais and I see too much of each other to escape all comment."

Diana withdrew herself slowly from his arms.

"And—and must you see so much of her now? Now that we are married?" she asked, rather wistfully.

"Why, of course. We have so many professional matters to discuss. You must be prepared for that, Diana. When we begin rehearsing 'Mrs. Fleming's Husband,' I shall be down at the theatre every day."

"Oh, yes, at the theatre. But—but you go to see Adrienne rather often now, don't you? And the rehearsals haven't begun yet."

Max hesitated a moment. Then he said quietly:—

"Dear, you must learn not to be jealous of my work. There are always—many things—that I have to discuss with Miss de Gervais."

And so, for the time being, the subject dropped. But the shadow had flitted for a moment across the face of the sun. A little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, had shown itself upon the horizon.

In July the Erringtons left town to spend a brief holiday at Crailing Rectory, and on their return, the preparations for the production of "Mrs. Fleming's Husband" went forward in good earnest.

They had not been back in town a week before Diana realised that, as the wife of a dramatist on the eve of the production of a play, she must be prepared to cede her prior right in her husband to the innumerable people who claimed his time on matters relating to the forthcoming production, and, above all, to the actress who was playing the leading part in it.

And it was in respect of this latter demand that Diana found the matrimonial shoe begin to pinch. To her, it seemed as though Adrienne were for ever 'phoning Max to come and see her, and invariably he set everything else aside—even Diana herself, if needs be—and obeyed her behest.

"I can't see why Adrienne wants to consult you so often," Diana protested one day. "She is perpetually ringing you up to go round to Somervell Street—or if it's not that, then she is writing to you."

Max laughed her protest aside.

"Well, there's a lot to consult about, you see," he said vaguely.

"So it seems. I shall be glad when it is all finished and I have you to myself again. When will the play be on?"

"About the middle of October," he replied, fidgeting restlessly with the papers that strewed his desk. They were talking in his own particular den, and Diana's eyes ruefully followed the restless gesture.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "you want me to go?"

"Well"—apologetically—"I have a lot to attend to this morning. Will you send Jerry to me—do you mind, dearest?"

"It wouldn't make much difference if I did," she responded grimly, as she went towards the door.

Max looked after her thoughtfully in silence. When she had gone, he leaned his head rather wearily upon his hand.

"It's better so," he muttered. "Better she should think it's only the play that binds me to Adrienne."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE APPROACHING SHADOW

Diana gathered up her songs and slowly dropped them into her music-case, while Baroni stared at her with a puzzled, brooding look in his eyes.

At last he spoke:—

"You are throwing away the great gift God has given you. First, you will take no more engagements, and now—what is it? Where is your voice?"

Diana, conscious of having done herself less than justice at the lesson which was just concluded, shook her head.

"I don't know," she said simply. "I don't seem able to sing now, somehow."

Baroni shrugged his shoulders.

"You are fretting," he declared. "And so the voice suffers."

"Fretting? I don't know that I've anything to fret about"—vaguely. "Only I shall be glad when 'Mrs. Fleming's Husband' is actually produced. Just now"—with a rather wistful smile—"I don't seem to have a husband to call my own. Miss de Gervais claims so much of his time."

Baroni's brow grew stormy.

"Mees de Gervais? Of course! It is inevitable!" he muttered. "I knew it must be like that."

Diana regarded him curiously.

"But why? Do—do all dramatists have to consult so much with the leading actress in the play?"

The old maestro made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as though disavowing any knowledge of the matter.

"Do not ask me!" he said bitterly. "Ask Max Errington—ask your husband these questions."

At the condemnation in his voice her loyalty asserted itself indignantly.

"You are right," she said quickly. "I ought not to have asked you. Good-bye, signor."

But Diana's loyalty was hard put to it to fight the newly awakened jealousy that was stirring in her heart, and it seemed as though just now everything and everybody combined to add fuel to the fire, for, only a few days later, when Miss Lermontof came to Lilac Lodge to practise with Diana, she, too, added her quota of disturbing comment.

"You're looking very pale," she remarked, at the end of the hour. "And you're shockingly out of voice! What's the matter?"

Then, as Diana made no answer, she added teasingly: "Matrimony doesn't seem to have agreed with you too well. Doesn't Max play the devoted husband satisfactorily?"

Diana flushed.

"You've no right to talk like that, Olga, even in jest," she said, with a little touch of matronly dignity that sat rather quaintly and sweetly upon her. "I know you don't like Max—never have liked him—but please recollect that you're speaking of my husband."

"You misunderstand me," replied the Russian, coolly, as she drew on her gloves. "I don't dislike him; but I do think he ought to be perfectly frank with you. As you say, he is your husband"—pointedly.

"Perfectly frank with me?"

Miss Lermontof nodded.

"Yes."

"He has been," affirmed Diana.

"Has he, indeed? Have you ever asked him"—she paused significantly—"who he is?"

"Who he is?" Diana felt her heart contract. What new mystery was this at which the other was hinting?

"Who he is?" she repeated. "Why—why—what do you mean?"

The accompanists queer green eyes narrowed between their heavy lids.

"Ask him—that's all," she replied shortly.

She drew her furs around her shoulders preparatory to departure, but Diana stepped in front of her, laying a detaining hand on her arm.

"What do you mean?" she demanded hotly. "Are you implying now that Max is going about under a false name? I hate your hints! Always, always you've tried to insinuate something against Max. . . . No!"—as the Russian endeavoured to free herself from her clasp—"No! You shan't leave this house till you've answered my question. You've made an accusation, and you shall prove it—if I have to bring you face to face with Max himself!"

"I've made no accusation—merely a suggestion that you should ask him who he is. And as to bringing me face to face with him—I can assure you"—there was an inflection of ironical amusement in her light tones—"no one would be less anxious for such a denouement than Max Errington himself. Now, good-bye; think over what I've said. And remember"—mockingly—"Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves!"

She flitted through the doorway, and Diana was left to deal as best she might with the innuendo contained in her speech.

"Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves."

The phrase seemed to crystallise in words the whole vague trouble that had been knocking at her heart, and she realised suddenly, with a shock of unbearable dismay, that she was jealous—jealous of Adrienne! Hitherto, she had not in the least understood the feeling of depression and malaise which had assailed her. She had only known that she felt restless and discontented when Max was out of her sight, irritated at the amount of his time which Miss de Gervais claimed, and she had ascribed these things to the depth of her love for him! But now, with a sudden flash of insight, engendered by the Russian's dexterous suggestion, she realised that it was jealousy, sheer primitive jealousy of another woman that had gripped her, and her young, wholesome, spontaneous nature recoiled in horrified self-contempt at the realisation.

Pobs' good counsel came back to her mind: "It seems to me that if you love him, you needs must trust him." Ah! but that was uttered in regard to another matter—the secret which shadowed Max's life—and she had trusted him over that, she told herself. This, this jealousy of another woman, was an altogether different thing, something which had crept insidiously into her heart, and woven its toils about her almost before she was aware of it.

And behind it all there loomed a new terror. Olga Lermontof's advice: "Ask him who he is," beat at the back of her brain, fraught with fresh mystery, the forerunner of a whole host of new suspicions.

Secrecy and concealment of any kind were utterly alien to Diana's nature. Impulsive, warm-hearted, quick-tempered, she was the last woman in the world to have been thrust by an unkind fate into an atmosphere of intrigue and mystery. She was like a pretty, fluttering, summer moth, caught in the gossamer web of a spider—terrified, struggling, battling against something she did not understand, and utterly without the patience and strong determination requisite to free herself.

For hours after Olga's departure she fought down the temptation to follow her advice and question her husband. She could not bring herself to hurt him—as it must do if he guessed that she distrusted him. But neither could she conquer the suspicions that had leaped to life within her. At last, for the time being, love obtained the mastery—won the first round of the struggle.

"I will trust him," she told herself. "And—and whether I trust him or not," she ended up defiantly, "at least he shall never know, never see it, if—if I can't."

So that it was a very sweet and repentant, if rather wan, Diana that greeted her husband when he returned from the afternoon rehearsal at the theatre.

Max's keen eyes swept the white, shadowed face.

"Has Miss Lermontof been here to-day?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes." A burning flush chased away her pallor as she answered his question.

"I see."

"You see?"—nervously. "What do you see?"

A very gentle expression came into Max's eyes.

"I see," he said kindly, "that I have a tired wife. You mustn't let Baroni and Miss Lermontof work you too hard between them."

"Oh, they don't, Max."

"All right, then. Only"—cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face up to his—"I notice I often have a somewhat worried-looking wife after one of Miss Lermontof's visits. I don't think she is too good a friend for you, Diana. Couldn't you get some one else to accompany you?"

Diana hesitated. She would have been quite glad to dispense with Olga's services had it been possible. The Russian was for ever hinting at something in connection either with Max or Miss de Gervais; to-day she had but gone a step further than usual.

"Well?" queried Max, reading the doubt in Diana's eyes.

"I'm afraid I couldn't engage any one else to accompany me," she said at last. "You see, Olga is Baroni's chosen accompanist, and—it might make trouble."

A curious expression crossed his face.

"Yes," he agreed slowly. "It might—make trouble, as you say. Well, why not ask Joan to stay with you for a time—to counterbalance matters?"

"Excellent suggestion!" exclaimed Diana, her spirits going up with a bound. Joan was always so satisfactory and cheerful and commonplace that she felt as though her mere presence in the house would serve to dispel the vague, indefinable atmosphere of suspicion that seemed closing round her. "I'll write to her at once."

"Yes, do. If she can come next month, she will be here for the first night of 'Mrs. Fleming's Husband.'"

Diana went away to write her letter, while Max remained pacing thoughtfully up and down the room, tapping restlessly with his fingers on his chest as he walked. His face showed signs of fatigue—the hard work in connection with the production of his play was telling on him—and since the brief interview with his wife, a new look of anxiety, an alert, startled expression, had dawned in his eyes.

He seemed to be turning something over in his mind as he paced to and fro. At last, apparently, he came to a decision.

"I'll do it," he said aloud. "It's a possible chance of silencing her."

He made his way downstairs, pausing at the door of the library, where Diana was poring over her letter to Joan.

"I find I must go out again," he said. "But I shall be back in time for dinner."

Diana looked up in dismay.

"But you've had no tea, Max," she protested.

"Can't stay for it now, dear."

He dropped a light kiss on her hair and was gone, while Diana, flinging down her pen, exclaimed aloud:—

"It's that woman again! I know it is! She's rung him up!"

And it never dawned upon her that the fact that she had unthinkingly referred to Adrienne de Gervais as "that woman" marked a turning-point in her attitude towards her.

Meanwhile Errington hailed a taxi and directed the chauffeur to drive him to 24 Brutton Square, where he asked to see Miss Lermontof.

He was shown into the big and rather gloomy-looking public drawing-room, of which none of Mrs. Lawrence's student-boarders made use except when receiving male visitors, much preferring the cheery comfort of their own bed-sitting-rooms—for Diana had been the only one amongst them whose means had permitted the luxury of a separate sitting-room—and in a few minutes Olga joined him there.

There was a curiously hostile look in her face as she greeted him.

"This is—an unexpected pleasure, Max," she began mockingly. "To what am I indebted?"

Errington hesitated a moment. Then, his keen eyes resting piercingly on hers, he said quietly:—

"I want to know how we stand, Olga. Are you trying to make mischief for me with my wife?"

"Then she's asked you?" exclaimed Olga triumphantly.

"Diana has asked me nothing. Though I have no doubt that you have been hinting and suggesting things to her that she would ask me about if it weren't for her splendid, loyalty. You have the tongue of an asp, Olga! Always, after your visits, I can see that Diana is worried and unhappy."

"How can she ever be happy—as your wife?"

Errington winced.

"I could make her happy—if you—you and Baroni—would let me. I know I must regard you as an enemy in—that other matter . . . as a 'passive resister,' at least," he amended, with a bitter smile. "But am I to regard you as an enemy to my marriage, too? Or, is it your idea of punishment, perhaps—to wreck my happiness?"

Olga shrugged her shoulders, and, walking to the window, stood there silently, staring out into the street. When she turned back again, her eyes were full of tears.

"Max," she said earnestly, "you may not believe it, but I want your happiness above everything else in the world. There is no one I love as I love you. Give up—that other affair. Wash your hands of it. Let Adrienne go, and take your happiness with Diana. That's what I'm working for—to make you choose between Diana and that interloper. You won't give her up for me; but perhaps, if Diana—if your wife—insists, you will shake yourself free, break with Adrienne de Gervais at last. Sometimes I'm almost tempted to tell Diana the truth, to force your hand!"

Errington's eyes blazed.

"If you did that," he said quietly, "I would never see, or speak to you, again."

Olga shivered a little.

"Your honour is mine," he went on. "Remember that."

"It isn't fair," she burst out passionately. "It isn't fair to put it like that. Why should I, and you, and Diana—all of us—be sacrificed for Adrienne?"

"Because you and I are—what we are, and because Diana is my wife."

Olga looked at him curiously.

"Then—if it came to a choice—you would actually sacrifice Diana?"

Errington's face whitened.

"It will not—it shall not!" he said vehemently. "Diana's faith will pull us through."

Olga smiled contemptuously.

"Don't be too sure. After all a woman's trust won't stand everything, and you're asking a great deal from Diana—a blind faith, under circumstances which might shake the confidence of any one. Already"—she leaned forward a little—"already she is beginning to be jealous of Adrienne."

"And whom have I to thank for that? You—you, from whom, more than from any other, I might have expected loyalty."

Olga shook her head.

"No, not me. But the fact that no wife worth the name will stand quietly by and see her husband at the beck and call of another woman."

"More especially when there is some one who drops poison in her ear day by day," he retorted.

"Yes," she acknowledged frankly. "If I can bring matters to a head, force you to a choice between Adrienne and Diana, I shall do it. And then, before God, Max! I believe you'll free yourself from that woman."

"No," he answered quietly, "I shall not."

"You'll sacrifice Diana?"—incredulously.

A smile of confidence lightened his face.

"I don't think it will come to that. I'm staking—everything—on Diana's trust in me."

"Then you'll lose—lose, I tell you."

"No," he said steadily. "I shall win."

Olga smote her hands together.

"Was there ever such a fool! I tell you, no woman's trust can hold out for ever. And since you can't explain to her—"

"It won't be for ever," he broke in quickly. "Everything goes well. Before long all the concealment will be at an end. And I shall be free."

Olga turned away.

"I can't wish you success," she said bitterly. "The day that brings you success will be the blackest hour of my life."

Errington's face softened a little.

"Olga, you are unreasonable—"

"Unreasonable, am I? Because I grudge paying for the sins of others? . . . If that is unreasonable—yes, then, I am unreasonable! Now, go. Go, and remember, Max, we are on opposite sides of the camp."

Errington paused at the door.

"So long as you keep your honour—our honour—clean," he said, "do what you like! I have utter, absolute trust in Diana."



CHAPTER XIX

THE "FIRST NIGHT" PERFORMANCE

The curtain fell amidst a roar of applause, and the lights flashed up over the auditorium once more. It was the first night performance of "Mrs. Fleming's Husband," and the house was packed with the usual crowd of first-nighters, critics, and members of "the" profession who were anxious to see Miss de Gervais in the new part Max Errington had created for her.

Diana and Joan Stair were in a box, escorted only by Jerry, since Max had firmly refused to come down to the theatre for the first performance.

"I can't stand first nights," he had said. "At least, not of my own plays." And not even Diana's persuasions had availed to move him from this decision.

Joan was ecstatic in her praise.

"Isn't Adrienne simply wonderful?" she exclaimed, as the music of the entr'acte stole out from the hidden orchestra.

"'M, yes." Diana's reply lacked enthusiasm.

Joan, if she could not boast great powers of intuition, was dowered with a keen observation, and she had not spent a week at Lilac Lodge without putting two and two together and making four of them. She had noticed a great change in Diana. The girl was moody and unusually silent; her gay good spirits had entirely vanished, and more than once Joan had caught her regarding her husband with a curious mixture of resentment and contempt in her eyes. Joan was frankly worried over the state of affairs.

"Why this nil admirari attitude?" she asked. "Have you and Adrienne quarrelled?"

"Quarrelled?" Diana raised her brows ever so slightly. "What should we quarrel about? As a matter of fact, I really don't see very much of her nowadays."

"So I imagined," replied Joan calmly. "When I stayed with you last May, either she came to the Lodge, or you went to Somervell Street, every day of the week. This time, you've not seen each other since I came."

"No? I don't think"—lightly—"that Adrienne cares much for members of her own sex. She prefers—their husbands."

Joan stared in amazement. The little acid speech was so unlike Diana that she felt convinced it sprang from some new and strong antagonism towards the actress. What could be the cause of it? Diana and Adrienne had been warm friends only a few months ago!

Joan's eyes travelled from Diana's small, set face to Jerry's pleasant boyish one. The latter had opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, and closed it again, reddening uncomfortably, and his dismayed expression was so obvious as to be almost comic.

The rise of the curtain for the third and last act put a summary end to any further conversation and Joan bent her attention on the stage once more, though all the time that her eyes and ears were absorbing the shifting scenes and brilliant dialogue of the play a little, persistent inner voice at the back of her brain kept repeating Diana's nonchalant "I really don't see very much of her nowadays," and querying irrepressibly, "Why not?"

Meanwhile, Diana, unconscious of the uneasy curiosity she had awakened in the mind of Joan, was watching the progress of the play intently. How designedly it was written around Adrienne de Gervais—calculated to give every possible opportunity to a fine emotional actress! Her lips closed a little more tightly together as the thought took hold of her. The author must have studied Adrienne, watched her every mood, learned every twist of her temperament, to have portrayed a character so absolutely suited to her as that of Mrs. Fleming. And how could a man know a woman's soul so well unless—unless it were the soul of the woman he loved? That was it; that was the explanation of all those things which had puzzled, and bewildered her for so long. And the author was her husband!

Diana, staring down from her box at that exquisite, breathing incarnation of grace on the stage below, felt that she hated Adrienne. She had never hated any one before, and the intensity of her feeling frightened her. Since a few months ago, strange, deep emotions had stirred within her—a passion of love and a passion of hatred such as in the days of her simple girlhood she would not have believed to be possible to any ordinary well-brought-up young Englishwoman. That Max was capable of a fierce heat of passion, she knew. But then, he was not all English; wilder blood ran in his veins. She could imagine his killing a man if driven by the lash of passionate jealousy. But she had never pictured herself obsessed by hate of a like quality.

And yet, now, as her eyes followed Adrienne's slender figure, with its curious little air of hauteur that always set her so apart from other women, moving hither and thither on the stage, her hands clenched themselves fiercely, and her grey eyes dilated with the intensity of her hatred. Almost—almost she could understand how men and women killed each other in the grip of a jealous love. . . .

The play was ended. Adrienne had bowed repeatedly in response to the wild enthusiasm of the audience, and of a sudden a new cry mingled with the shouts and clapping.

"Author! Author!"

Adrienne came forward again and bowed, smilingly shaking her head, gesturing a negative with her hands. But still the cry went on, "Author! Author!"—the steady, persistent drone of an audience which does not mean to be denied.

Diana experienced a brief thrill of triumph. She felt convinced that Adrienne would have liked to have Max standing beside her at this moment. It would have set the seal on an evening of glorious success, completed it, as it were. And he had refused to come, declined—so Diana put it to herself—to share the evening's triumph with the actress who had so well interpreted his work. At least this would be a pin-prick in the enemy's side!

And then—then—a hand pulled aside the heavy folds of the stage curtain, and the next moment Max and Adrienne were standing there together, bowing and smiling, while the audience roared and cheered its enthusiasm.

Diana could hardly believe her eyes. Max had told her so emphatically that he would not come. And now, he was here! He had lied to her! The affair had been pre-arranged between him and Adrienne all the time? Only she—the wife!—had been kept in the dark. Probably he had spent the entire evening behind the scenes. . . . In her overwrought condition, no supposition was too wild for credence.

Vaguely she heard some one at the back of the house shout "Speech!" and the cry was taken up by a dozen voices, but Max only laughed and shook his head, and once more the heavy curtains fell together, shutting him and Adrienne from her sight.

Mechanically Diana gathered up her wraps and prepared to leave the box.

"Aren't you coming round behind to congratulate them, Mrs. Errington?"

Jerry's astonished tones broke on her ears as she turned down the corridor in the direction of the vestibule.

"No," she replied quietly. "I'm going home."

* * * * * *

"You told me you wouldn't come to the theatre—and you intended going all the time!"

Diana's wraps were flung on the chair beside her, and she stood, a slim, pliant figure in her white evening gown, defiantly facing her husband.

"No, I'd no intention of going. I detest first nights," he answered.

"Then why were you there? Oh, I don't believe it—I don't believe it! You simply wanted to spend the evening with Adrienne; that was why you refused to go with me."

"Diana!" Max spoke incredulously. "You can't believe—you can't think that!"

"But I do think that!"—imperiously. "What else can I think?" Her long-pent jealousy had broken forth at last, and the words raced from her lips. "You refused to come when I asked you—offered me Jerry as an escort instead. Jerry!"—scornfully—"I'm to be content with my husband's secretary, I suppose, so that my husband himself can dance attendance on Adrienne de Gervais?"

Max stood motionless, his eyes like steel.

"You are being—rather childish," he said at last, with slow deliberation. His cool, contemptuous tones cut like a whip.

She had been rapidly losing her self-command, and, reading the intense anger beneath his outward calm, she made an effort to pull herself together.

"Childish?" she retorted. "Yes, I suppose it is childish to mind being deceived. I ought to have been prepared for it—expected it."

At the note of suffering in her voice the anger died swiftly out of his eyes.

"You don't mean that, Diana," he said, more gently.

"Yes, I do. You warned me—didn't you?—that there would be things you couldn't explain. I suppose"—bitterly—"this is one of them!"

"No, it is not. I can explain this. I didn't intend coming to-night, as I told you. But Miss de Gervais rang up from the theatre and begged me to come, so, of course, as she wished it—"

"'As she wished it!' Are her wishes, then, of so much more importance than mine?"

Errington was silent for a moment. At last he replied quietly:—

"You know they are not. But in this case, in the matter of the play, she is entitled to every consideration."

Diana's eyes searched his face. Beneath the soft laces of her gown her breast still rose and fell stormily, but she had herself in hand now.

"Max, when I married you I took . . . something . . . on trust." She spoke slowly, weighing her words, "But I didn't expect that something to include—Adrienne! What has she to do with you?"

Errington's brows came sharply together. He drew a quick, short breath as though bracing himself to meet some unforeseen danger.

"I've written a play for her," he answered shortly.

"Yes, I know. But is that all that there is between you—this play?"

"I can't answer that question," he replied quietly.

Diana flung out her hand with a sudden, passionate gesture.

"You've answered it, I think," she said scornfully.

He took a quick stride towards her, catching her by the arms.

"Diana"—his voice vibrated—"won't you trust me?"

"Trust you! How can I?" she broke out wildly. "If trusting you means standing by whilst Adrienne— Oh, I can't bear it. You're asking too much of me, Max. I didn't know . . . when you asked me to trust you . . . that it meant—this! . . . And there's something else, too. Who are you? What is your real name? I don't even know"—bitterly—"whom I've married!"

He released her suddenly, almost as though she had struck him.

"Who has been talking to you?" he demanded, thickly.

"Then it's true?"

Diana's hands fell to her sides and every drop of colour drained away from her face. The question had been lying dormant in her mind ever since the day when Olga Lermontof had first implanted it there. Now it had sprung from her lips, dragged forth by the emotion of the moment. And he couldn't answer it!

"Then it's true?" she repeated.

Errington's face set like a mask.

"That is a question you shouldn't have asked," he replied coldly.

"And one you cannot answer?"

He bent his head.

"And one I cannot answer."

Very slowly she picked up her wraps.

"Thank you," she said unsteadily. "I'll—I'll go now."

He laid his hand deliberately on the door-handle.

"No," he said. "No, you won't go. I've heard what you have to say; now you'll listen to me. Good God, Diana!" he continued passionately. "Do you think I'm going to stand quietly by and see our happiness wrecked?"

"I don't see how you can prevent it," she said dully.

"I? No; I can do nothing. But you can. Diana, beloved, have faith in me! I can't explain those things to you—not now. Some day, please God, I shall be able to, but till that day comes—trust me!" There was a depth of supplication and entreaty in his tone, but it left her unmoved. She felt frozen—passionless.

"Do you mean—do you mean that Adrienne, your name, everything, is all part of—of what you can't tell me? Part of—the shadow?"

He was silent a moment. Then he answered steadily:—

"Yes. That much I may tell you."

She put up her hand and pushed back her hair impatiently from her forehead.

"I can't understand it . . . I can't understand it," she muttered.

"Dear, must one understand—to love? . . . Can't you have faith?"

His eyes, those blue eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—did she not know it to her heart's undoing?—so unutterably tender, besought her. But, for once, they awakened no response. She felt cold—quite cold and indifferent.

"No, Max," she answered wearily. "I don't think I can. You ask me to believe that there is need for you to see so much of Adrienne. At first you said it was because of the play. Now you say it has to do with this—this thing I may not know. . . . I'm afraid I can't believe it. I think a man's wife should come first—first of anything. I've tried—oh, I've tried not to mind when you left me so often to go to Adrienne. I used to tell myself that it was only on account of the play. I tried to believe it, because—because I loved you so. But"—with a bitter little smile—"I don't think I ever really believed it—I only cheated myself. . . . There's something else, too—the shadow. Baroni knows what it is—and Olga Lermontof. Only I—your wife—I know nothing."

She paused, as though expecting some reply, but Max remained silent, his arms folded across his chest, his head a little bent.

"I was only a child when you married me, Max," she went on presently. "I didn't realise what it meant for a husband to have some secret business which he cannot tell his wife. But I know now what it means. It's merely an excuse to be always with another woman—"

In a stride Max was beside her, his eyes blazing, his hands gripping her shoulders with a clasp that hurt her.

"How dare you?" he exclaimed. "Unsay that—take it back? Do you hear?"

She shrank a little, twisting in his grasp, but he held her remorselessly.

"No, I won't take it back. . . . Ah! Let me go, Max, you're hurting me!"

He released her instantly, and, as his hands fell away from her shoulders, the white flesh reddened into bars where his fingers had gripped her. His eyes rested for a moment on the angry-looking marks, and then, with an inarticulate cry, he caught her to him, pressing his lips against the bruised flesh, against her eyes, her mouth, crushing her in his arms.

She lay there passively; but her body stiffened a little, and her lips remained quite still and unresponsive beneath his.

"Diana! . . . Beloved! . . ."

She thrust her hands against his chest.

"Let me go," she whispered breathlessly, "Let me go. I can't bear you to touch me."

With a quick, determined movement she freed herself, and stood a little away from him, panting.

"Don't ever . . . do that . . . again. I—I can't bear you to touch me . . . not now."

She made a wavering step towards the door. He held it open for her, and in silence she passed out and up the stairs. Presently, from the landing above, he heard the lock of her bedroom door click into its socket. . . .



CHAPTER XX

THE SHADOW FALLS

Breakfast, the following morning, was something of an ordeal. Neither Max nor Diana spoke to each other if speech could be avoided, and, when this was impossible, they addressed each other with a frigid politeness that was more painful than the silence.

Jerry and Joan, sensing the antagonism in the atmosphere, endeavoured to make conversation, but their efforts received scant encouragement, and both were thankful when the meal came to an end, and they were free to seek refuge in another room, leaving husband and wife alone together.

Diana glanced a trifle nervously at her husband as the door closed behind them. There was a coldness, an aloofness about him, that reminded her vividly of the early days of their acquaintanceship, when his cool indifference of manner had set a barrier between them which her impulsive girlhood had been powerless to break through.

"Will you spare me a few minutes in my study?" he said. His face was perfectly impassive; only the peculiar brilliancy of his eyes spoke of the white-hot anger he was holding in leash.

Diana nodded silently. For a moment, bereft of words, she quailed before the knowledge of that concentrated anger, but by the time they had reached his study she had pulled herself together, and was ready to face him with a high temper almost equal to his own.

She had had the night for reflection, and the sense of bitter injustice under which she was labouring had roused in her the same dogged, unbending obstinacy which, in a much smaller way, had evinced itself when Baroni had thrown the music at her and had subsequently bade her pick it up.

But now that sense of wild rebellion against injustice, against personal injury, was magnified a thousandfold. For months she had been drifting steadily apart from her husband, acutely conscious of that secret thing in his life, and fiercely resentful of its imperceptible, yet binding influence on all his actions. Again and again she had been perplexed and mystified by certain incomprehensible things which she had observed—for instance, the fact that, as she knew, part of Max's correspondence was conducted in cipher; that at times he seemed quite unaccountably worried and depressed; and, above all, that he was for ever at the beck and call of Adrienne de Gervais.

Gradually she had begun to connect the two things—Adrienne, and that secret which dwelt like a shadowy menace at the back of everything. It was clear, too, that they were also linked together in the minds both of Baroni and Olga Lermontof—a dropped sentence here, a hint there, had assured her of that.

Then had come Olga's definite suggestion, "Adrienne de Gervais is a bad friend for the man one loves!" And from that point onward Diana had seen new meanings in all that passed between her husband and the actress, and a blind jealousy had taken possession of her. Something out of the past bound her husband and Adrienne together, of that she felt convinced. She believed that the knowledge which Max had chosen to withhold from her—his wife—he shared with Adrienne—and all Diana's fierce young sense of possession rose up in opposition.

Last night, the sight of her husband and the actress, standing together on the stage, had seemed to her to epitomise their relative positions—Max and Adrienne, working together, fully in each other's confidence, whilst she herself was the outsider, only the onlooker in the box!

"Well?" she said, defiantly turning to her husband. "Well? What is it you wish to say to me?"

"I want an explanation of your conduct—last night."

"And I," she retorted impetuously, "I want an explanation of your conduct—ever since we've been married!"

He swept her demand aside as though it were the irresponsible prattle of a child, ignored it utterly. He was conscious of only one thing—that she had barred herself away from him, humiliated him, dealt their mutual love a blow beneath which it reeled.

The bolted door itself counted for nothing. What mattered was that it was she who had closed it, deliberately choosing to shut him outside her life, and cutting every cord of love and trust and belief that bound them together.

An Englishman might have stormed or laughed, as the mood took him, and comforted himself with the reflection that she would "get over it." But not so Max. The sensitiveness which he hid from the world at large, but which revealed itself in the lines of that fine-cut mouth of his, winced under the humiliation she had put upon him. Love, in his idea, was a thing so delicate, so rare, that Diana's crude handling of the situation bore for him a far deeper meaning than the impulsive, headlong action of the over-wrought girl had rightly held. To Max, it signified the end—the denial of all the exquisite trust and understanding which love should represent. If she could think for an instant that he would have asked aught from her at a moment when they were so far apart in spirit, then she had not understood the ideal oneness of body and soul which love signified to him, and the knowledge that she had actually sought to protect herself from him had hurt him unbearably.

"Last night," he said slowly, "you showed me that you have no trust, no faith in me any longer."

And Diana, misunderstanding, thinking of the secret which he would not share with her, and impelled by the jealousy that obsessed her, replied impetuously:—

"Yes, I meant to show you that. You refuse me your confidence, and expect me to believe in you! You set me aside for Adrienne de Gervais, and then you ask me to—trust you? How can I? . . . I'm not a fool, Max."

"So it's that? The one thing over which I asked your faith?" The limitless scorn in his voice lashed her.

"You had no right to ask it!" she broke out bitterly. "Oh, you knew what it would mean. I, I was too young to realise. I didn't think—I didn't understand what a horrible thing a secret between husband and wife might be. But I can't bear it—I can't bear it any longer! I sometimes wonder," she added slowly, "if you ever loved me?"

"If I ever loved you?" he repeated. "There has never been any other woman in the world for me. There never will be."

The utter, absolute conviction of his tones knocked at her heart, but fear and jealousy were stronger than love.

"Then prove it!" she retorted. "Take me into your confidence; put Adrienne out of your life."

"It isn't possible—not yet," he said wearily. "You're asking what I cannot do."

She took a step nearer.

"Tell me this, then. What did Olga Lermontof mean when she bade me ask your name? Oh!"—with a quick intake of her breath—"you must answer that, Max; you must tell me that. I have a right to know it!"

For a moment he was silent, while she waited, eager-eyed, tremulously appealing, for his answer. At last it came.

"No," he said inflexibly. "You have no—right—to ask anything I haven't chosen to tell you. When you gave me your love, you gave me your faith, too. I warned you what it might mean—but you gave it. And I"—his voice deepened—"I worshipped you for it! But I see now, I asked too much of you. More"—cynically—"than any woman has to give."

"Then—then"—her voice trembled—"you mean you won't tell me anything more?"

"I can't."

"And—and Adrienne? Everything must go on just the same?"

"Just the same"—implacably.

She looked at him, curiously.

"And you expect me still to feel the same towards you, I suppose? To behave as though nothing had come between us?"

For a moment his control gave way.

"I expect nothing," he said hoarsely. "I shall never ask you for anything again—neither love nor friendship. As you have decreed, so it shall be!"

Slowly, with bent head, Diana turned and left the room.

So this was the end! She had made her appeal, risked everything on his love for her—and lost. Adrienne de Gervais was stronger than she!

Hereafter, she supposed, they would live as so many other husbands and wives lived—outwardly good friends, but actually with all the beautiful links of love and understanding shattered and broken.

* * * * * *

"Since the first night of the play they've hardly said a word to each other—only when it's absolutely necessary." Joan spoke dejectedly, her chin cupped in her hand.

Jerry nodded.

"I know," he agreed. "It's pretty awful."

He and Joan were having tea alone together, cosily, by the library fire. Diana had gone out to a singing-lesson, and Errington was shut up in his study attending to certain letters, written in cipher—letters which reached him frequently, bearing a foreign postmark, and the answers to which he never by any chance dictated to his secretary.

"Surely they can't have quarrelled, just because he didn't come to the theatre with us that night," pursued Joan. "Do you think Diana could have been offended because he came down afterwards to please Miss Gervais?"

"Partly that. But it's a lot of things together, really. I've seen it coming. Diana's been getting restive for some time. There are—Look here! I don't wish to pry into what's not my business, but a fellow can't live in a house without seeing things, and there's something in Errington's life which Di knows nothing about. And it's that—just the not knowing—which is coming between them."

"Well, then, why on earth doesn't he tell her about it, whatever it is?"

Jerry shrugged his shoulders.

"Can't say. I don't know what it is; it's not my business to know. But his wife's another proposition altogether."

"I suppose he expects her to trust him over it," said Joan thoughtfully.

"That's about the size of it. And Diana isn't taking any."

"I should trust him with anything in the world—a man with that face!" observed Joan, after a pause.

"There you go!" cried Jerry discontentedly. "There you go, with your unfailing faith in the visible object. A man's got to look a hero before you think twice about him! Mark my words, Jo—many a saint's face has hidden the heart of a devil."

Joan surveyed him consideringly.

"I've never observed that you have a saint's face, Jerry," she remarked calmly.

"Beast! Joan"—he made a dive for her hand, but she eluded him with the skill of frequent practice—"how much longer are you going to keep me on tenterhooks? You know I'm the prodigal son, and that I'm only waiting for you to say 'yes,' to return to the family bosom—"

"And you propose to use me as a stepping stone! I know. You think that if you return as an engaged young man—"

"With a good reference from my last situation," interpolated Jerry, grinning.

"Yes—that too, then your father will forget all your peccadilloes and say, 'Bless you, my children'—"

"Limelight on the blushing bur-ride! And they lived happily ever after! Yes, that's it! Jolly good programme, isn't it?"

And somehow Jerry's big boyish arm slipped itself round Joan's shoulders—and Joan raised no objections.

"But—about Max and Diana?" resumed Miss Stair after a judicious interval.

"Well, what about them?"

"Can't we—can't we do anything? Talk to them?"

"I just see myself talking to Errington!" murmured Jerry. "I'd about as soon discuss its private and internal arrangements with a volcano! My dear kid, it all depends upon Diana and whether she's content to trust her husband or not. I'd trust Max through thick and thin, and no questions asked. If he blew up the Houses of Parliament, I should believe he'd some good reason for doing it. . . . But then, I'm not his wife!"

"Well, I shall talk to Diana," said Joan seriously. "I'm sure Dad would, if he were here. And I do think, Jerry, you might screw up courage to speak to Max. He can't eat you! And—and I simply hate to see those two at cross purposes! They were so happy at the beginning."

The mention of matrimonial happiness started a new train of thought, and the conversation became of a more personal nature—the kind of conversation wherein every second or third sentence starts with "when we are married," and thence launches out into rose-red visions of the great adventure.

Presently the house door clanged, and a minute later Diana came into the room. She threw aside her furs and looked round hastily.

"Where's Max?" she asked sharply.

"Not concealed beneath the Chesterfield," volunteered Jerry flippantly. Then, as he caught a hostile sparkle of irritation in her grey eyes, he added hastily, "He's in his study."

Diana nodded, and, without further remark, went away in search of her husband.

"Are you busy, Max?" she asked, pausing on the threshold of the room where he was working.

He rose at once, placing a chair for her with the chilly courtesy which he had accorded her since their last interview in this same room.

"Not too busy to attend to you," he replied. "Where will you sit? By the fire?"

Diana shook her head. She was a little flushed, and her eyes were bright with some suppressed excitement,

"No thanks," she replied. "I only came to tell you that I've been having a talk with Baroni about my voice, and—and that I've decided to begin singing again this winter—professionally, I mean. It seems a pity to waste any more time."

She spoke rapidly, and with a certain nervousness.

For an instant a look of acute pain leaped into Errington's eyes, but it was gone almost at once, and he turned to her composedly.

"Is that the only reason, Diana?" he said. "The waste of time?"

She was silent a moment, busying herself stripping off her gloves. Presently she looked up, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

"No," she said steadily. "It isn't."

"May I know the—other reasons?"

Her lip curled.

"I should have thought they were obvious. Our marriage has been a mistake. It's a failure. And I can't bear this life any longer. . . . I must have something to do."

CHAPTER XXI

THE OTHER WOMAN

Carlo Baroni's joy knew no bounds when he understood that Diana had definitely decided to return to the concert platform. His first action was to order her away for a complete change and rest, so she and Joan obediently packed their trunks and departed to Switzerland, where they forgot for a time the existence of such things as London fogs, either real or figurative, and threw themselves heart and soul into the winter sports that were going forward.

The middle of February found them once more in England, and Joan rejoined her father, while Diana went back to Lilac Lodge. She was greatly relieved to discover that the break had simplified several problems and made it much easier for her to meet her husband and begin life again on fresh terms. Max, indeed, seemed to have accepted the new regime with that same mocking philosophy with which he invariably faced the problems of life—and which so successfully cloaked his hurt from prying eyes.

He was uniformly kind in his manner to his wife—with that light, half-cynical kindness which he had accorded her in the train on their first memorable journey together, and which effectually set them as far apart from each other as though they stood at the opposite ends of the earth.

Unreasonably enough, Diana bitterly resented this attitude. Womanlike, she made more than one attempt to re-open the matter over which they had quarrelled, but each was skilfully turned aside, and the fact that after his one rejected effort at reconciliation, Max had calmly accepted the new order of things, added fuel to the jealous fire that burned within her. She told herself that if he still cared for her, if he were not utterly absorbed in Adrienne de Gervais, he would never have rested until he had restored the old, happy relations between them.

Instinctively she sought to dull the pain at her heart by plunging headlong into professional life. Her voice, thanks to the rest and change of her visit to Switzerland, had regained all its former beauty, and her return to the concert platform was received with an outburst of popular enthusiasm. The newspapers devoted half a column apiece to the subject, and several of them prophesied that it was in grand opera that Madame Diana Quentin would eventually find the setting best suited to her gifts.

"Mere concert work"—wrote one critic—"will never give her the scope which both her temperament and her marvellous voice demand."

And with this opinion Baroni cordially concurred. It was his ultimate ambition for Diana that she should study for grand opera, and she herself, only too thankful to find something that would occupy her thoughts and take her right out of herself, as it were, enabling her to forget the overthrow of her happiness, flung herself into the work with enthusiasm.

Gradually, as time passed on, her bitter feelings towards Max softened a little. That light, half-ironical manner he had assumed brought back to her so vividly the Max Errington of the early days of their acquaintance that it recalled, too, a measure of the odd attraction he had held for her in that far-away time.

That he still visited Adrienne very frequently she was aware, but often, on his return from Somervell Street, he seemed so much depressed that she began at last to wonder whether those visits were really productive of any actual enjoyment. Possibly she had misjudged them—her husband and her friend—and it might conceivably be really only business matters which bound them together after all.

If so—if that were true—how wantonly she had flung away her happiness!

Late one afternoon, Max, who had been out since early morning, came in looking thoroughly worn out. His eyes, ringed with fatigue, held an alert look of strain and anxiety for which Diana was at a loss to account.

She was at the piano when he entered the room, idly trying over some MS. songs that had been submitted by aspiring composers anxious to secure her interest.

"Why, Max," she exclaimed, genuine concern in her voice, as she rose from the piano. "How worried you look! What is the matter?"

"Nothing," he returned. "At least, nothing in which you can help," he added hastily. "Unless—"

"Unless what? Please . . . let me help . . . if I can." Diana spoke rather nervously. She was suddenly struck by the fact that the last few months had been responsible for a great change in her husband's appearance. He looked much thinner and older than formerly, she thought. There were harassed lines in his face, and its worn contours and shadowed eyes called aloud to the compassionate womanhood within her, to the mother-instinct that involuntarily longs to heal and soothe.

"Tell me what I can do, Max?"

A smile curved his lips, half whimsical, half sad.

"You can do for me what you do for all the rest of the world—I won't ask more of you," he replied. "Sing to me."

Diana coloured warmly. The first part of his speech stung her unbearably.

"Sing to you?" she repeated.

"Yes. I'm very tired, and nothing is more restful than music." Then, as she hesitated, he added, "Unless, of course, I'm asking too much."

"You know you are not," she answered swiftly.

She resumed her place at the piano, and, while he lay back in his chair with closed eyes, she sang to him—the music of the old masters who loved melody, and into whose songs the bitterness and unrest of the twentieth century had not crept.

Presently, she thought, he slept, and very softly her hands strayed into the simple, sorrowful music of "The Haven of Memory," and a note of wistful appeal, not all of art, added a new depth to the exquisite voice.

How once your love But crowned and blessed me only, Long and long ago.

The refrain died into silence, and Diana, looking up, found Max's piercing blue eyes fixed upon her. He was not asleep, then, after all.

He smiled slightly as their glances met.

"Do you remember I once told you I thought 'The Hell of Memory' would be a more appropriate title? . . . I was quite right."

"Max—" Diana's voice quavered and broke.

A sudden eager light sprang into his face. Swiftly he same to her side and stood looking down at her.

"Diana," he said tensely, "must it always remain—the hell of memory?"

They were very near to each other in that moment; the great wall fashioned of jealousy and distrust was tottering to its foundations.

And then, from the street below came the high-pitched, raucous sound of the newsboy's voice:—

"Attempted Murder of Miss Adrian Jervis! Premier Theatre Besieged."

The words, with their deadly import, cut between husband and wife like a sword.

"Good God!" The exclamation burst from Max with a cry of horror. In an instant he was out of the room, down the stairs, and running bareheaded along the street in pursuit of the newsboy, and a few seconds later he was back with a newspaper, damp from the press, in his hands.

Diana had remained sitting just as he had left her. She felt numbed. The look of dread and consternation that had leaped into her husband's face, as the news came shrilling up from the street below, had told her, more eloquently than any words could do, how absolutely his life was bound up in that of Adrienne de Gervais. A man whose heart's desire has been suddenly snatched from him might look so; no other.

Max, oblivious of everything else, was reading the brief newspaper account at lightning speed. At last—

"I must go!" he said. "I must go round to Somervell Street at once."

When he had gone, Diana picked up the newspaper from the floor where he had tossed it, and smoothing out its crumpled sheet, proceeded to read the short paragraph, surmounted by staring head-lines, which had sent her husband hurrying hot-foot to Adrienne's house.

"MURDEROUS ATTACK ON MISS ADRIENNE DE GERVAIS.

"As Miss Adrienne de Gervais, the popular actress, was leaving the Premier Theatre after the matinee performance to-day, a man rushed out from a side street and fired three shots at her, wounding her severely. Miss de Gervais was carried into the theatre, where a doctor who chanced to be passing rendered first aid. Within a very few minutes the news of the outrage became known and the theatre was besieged by inquirers. The would-be assassin, who made good his escape, was a man of unmistakably foreign appearance."

Diana laid the paper down very quietly. This, then, was the news which had power to bring that look of fear and dread to her husband's face—which could instantly wipe out from his mind all thoughts of his wife and of everything that concerned her.

Perhaps, she reflected scornfully, it was as well that the revelation had come when it did! Otherwise—otherwise, she had been almost on the verge of forgetting her just cause for jealousy, forgetting all the past months of misery, and believing in her husband once again.

The trill of the telephone from below checked her bitter thoughts, and hurrying downstairs into the hall, she lifted the receiver and held it to her ear.

"Yes. Who is it?"

Possibly something was wrong with the wire, or perhaps it was only that Diana's voice, particularly deep and low-pitched for a woman, misled the speaker at the other end. Whatever it may have been, Adrienne's voice, rather tremulous and shaky, came through the 'phone, and she was obviously under the impression that she was speaking to Diana's husband.

"Oh, is that you, Max? Don't be frightened. I'm not badly hurt. I hear it's already in the papers, and as I knew you'd be nearly mad with anxiety, I've made the doctor let me 'phone you myself. Of course you can guess who did it. It was not the man you caught waiting about outside the theatre. It was the taller one of the two we saw at Charing Cross that day. Please come round as soon as you can."

Diana's lips set in a straight line. Very deliberately she replaced the receiver and rang off without reply. A small, fine smile curved her lips as she reflected that, within a few minutes, Max's arrival at Somervell Street would enlighten Miss de Gervais as to the fact that she had bean pouring out her reassuring remarks to the wrong person.

Half an hour later Diana came slowly downstairs, dressed for dinner. Jerry was waiting for her in the hall.

"There's a 'phone message just come through from Max," he said, a trifle awkwardly. (Jerry had not lived through the past few months at Lilac Lodge without realising the terms on which the Erringtons stood with each other.) "He won't be back till late."

Diana bestowed her sweetest smile upon him.

"Then we shall be dining tete-a-tete. How nice! Come along."

She took his arm and they went in together.

"This is a very serious thing about Miss de Gervais, isn't it?" she said conversationally, as they sat down.

"A dastardly business," assented Jerry, with indignation.

"I suppose—did Max give you any further particulars?"

"The bullet's broken her arm just above the elbow. Of course she won't be able to play for some time to come."

"How her understudy must be rejoicing," murmured Diana reflectively.

"It seems," pursued Jerry, "that the shot was fired by some shady actor fellow. Down on his luck, you know, and jealous of Miss de Gervais' success. At least, that's what they suspect, and Max has 'phoned me to send a paragraph to all the morning papers to that effect."

"That's very curious," commented Diana.

"Why? I should think it's a jolly good guess."

Diana smiled enigmatically.

"Anyhow, it sounds a very natural supposition," she agreed lightly, and then switched the conversation on to other subjects. Jerry, however, seemed rather absent and distrait, and presently, when at last the servants had handed the coffee and withdrawn, he blurted out:—

"It sounds beastly selfish of me, but this affair has upset my own little plans rather badly."

"Yours, Jerry?" said Diana kindly. "How's that? Give me a cigarette and tell me what's gone wrong."

"What would Baroni say to your smoking?" queried Jerry, as he tendered his case and held a match for her to light her cigarette.

"I'm not singing anywhere for a week," laughed Diana. "So this orgy is quite legitimate." And she inhaled luxuriously. "Now, go on, Jerry, what plans of yours have been upset?"

"Well"—Jerry reddened—"I wrote to my governor the other day. It—it was to please Joan, you know."

Diana nodded, her grey eyes dancing.

"Of course," she said gravely, "I quite understand."

"And—and here's his answer!"

He opened his pocket-book, and extracting a letter from the bundle it contained, handed it to Diana.

"You mean you want me to read this?"

"Please."

Diana unfolded it, and read the following terse communication:—

"Come home and bring the lady. Am fattening the calf.—Your affectionate Father."

"Jerry, I should adore your father," said Diana, as she gave him back the letter. "He must he a perfect gem amongst parents."

"He's not a bad old chap," acknowledged Jerry, as he replaced the paternal invitation in his pocket-book. "But you see the difficulty? I was going to ask Errington to give me a few days' leave, and I don't like to bother him now that he has all this worry about Miss de Gervais on his hands."

Diana flushed hotly at Jerry's tacit acceptance of the fact that Adrienne's affairs were naturally of so much moment to her husband. It was another pin-prick in the wound that had been festering for so long. She ignored it, however, and answered quietly:—

"Yes, I see. Perhaps you had better leave it for a few days. What about Pobs? He'll have to be consulted in the matter, won't he?"

"I told him, long ago, that I wanted Joan. Before"—with a grin—"I ever summoned up pluck to tell Joan herself! He was a brick about it, but he thought I ought to make it up with the governor before Joan and I were formally engaged. So I did—and I'm jolly glad of it. And now I want to go down to Crailing, and fetch Joan, and take her with me to Abbotsleigh. So I should want at least a week off."

"Well, wait till Max comes back," advised Diana, "We shall know more about the matter then. And—and—Jerry!" She stretched out her hand, which immediately disappeared within Jerry's big, boyish fist. "Good luck, old boy!"

* * * * * *

Max returned at about ten o'clock, and Diana proceeded to offer polite inquiries about Miss de Gervais' welfare. She wondered if he would remember how near they had been to each other just for an instant before the news of the attempt upon Adrienne's life had reached them.