But apparently he had forgotten all about it. His thoughts were entirely concerned with Adrienne, and he was unusually grave and preoccupied.

He ordered a servant to bring him some sandwiches and a glass of wine, and when he and Diana were once more alone, be announced abruptly:—

"I shall have to leave home for a few days."

"Leave home?" echoed Diana.

"Yes. Adrienne must go out of town, and I'm going to run down to some little country place and find rooms for her and Mrs. Adams."

"Find rooms?" Diana stared at him amazedly. "But surely—won't they go to Red Gables?"

Max shook his head.

"No. It wouldn't be safe after this—this affair. The same brute might try to get her again. You see, it's quite well known that she has a house at Crailing."

"Who is it that is such an enemy of hers?"

Max hesitated a moment.

"It might very well be some former actor, some poor devil of a fellow down on his luck, who has brooded over his fancied wrongs till he was half-mad," he said, at length.

Diana's eyes flashed. So that item of news intended for the morning papers was also to be handed out for home consumption!

"What steps are you taking to trace the man?"

Again Max paused before replying. To Diana, his hesitation strengthened her conviction that he was, as usual, withholding something from her.

"Well?" she repeated. "What steps are you taking?"

"None," he answered at last reluctantly. "Adrienne doesn't wish any fuss made over the matter."

And yet, Diana reflected, both her husband and Miss de Gervais knew quite well who the assailant was! "The taller of the two," Adrienne had said through the telephone. Why, then, with that clue in her hands, did she refuse to prosecute?

Suddenly, into Diana's mind flashed an answer to the question—to the multitude of questions which had perplexed, her for so long. She felt as a traveller may who has been journeying along an unknown way in the dark, hurt and bruised by stones and pitfalls he could not see, when suddenly a light shines out, revealing all the dangers of the path.

The explanation of all those perplexities and suspicions of the past was so simple, so obvious, that she marvelled why it had never occurred to her before. Adrienne de Gervais was neither more or less than an adventuress—one of the vampire type of woman who preys upon mankind, drawing them into her net by her beauty and charm, even as she had drawn Max himself! This, this supplied the key to the whole matter—all that had gone before, and all that was now making such a mockery of her married life.

And the "poor devil of a fellow" who had attempted Adrienne's life had probably figured largely in her past, one of her dupes, and now, understanding at last what kind of woman it was for whom he had very likely sacrificed all that made existence worth while, he was obsessed with a crazy desire for vengeance—vengeance at any price. And Adrienne, of course, in her extremity, had turned to her latest captive, Max himself, for protection!

Oh! it was all quite clear now! The scattered pieces of the puzzle were fitting together and making a definite picture.

Stray remarks of Olga Lermontof's came back to her—those little pointed arrows wherewith the Russian had skilfully found out the joints in her armour—"Miss de Gervais is not quite what she seems." And again, "I'm perfectly sure Adrienne de Gervais' past is a closed book to you." Proof positive that Olga had known all along what Diana had only just this moment perceived to be the truth.

Diana's small hands clenched themselves until the nails dug into the soft palms, as she remembered how those same hands had been held out in friendship to this very adventuress—to the woman who had wrecked her happiness, and for whom Max was ready at any time to set her and her wishes upon one side! What a blind, trusting fool she had been! Well, that was all ended now; she knew where she stood. Never again would Max or Adrienne be able to deceive her. The scales had at last fallen from her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Diana"—Max's cool, quiet tones broke in on the torment of her thoughts. "I'm sorry, but I shall probably have to be away several days."

"Have you forgotten we're giving a big reception here next Wednesday?"

"Wednesday, is it? And to-day is Saturday. I shall find rooms somewhere to-morrow, and take Adrienne and Mrs. Adams down to them the next day. . . No, I can't possibly be back for Wednesday."

"But you must!"—impetuously.

"It's impossible. I shall stay with Adrienne and Mrs. Adams until I'm quite sure that the place is safe for them—that that fellow hasn't traced them and isn't lurking about in the neighbourhood. You mustn't expect me back before Saturday at the earliest. You and Jerry can manage the reception. I hate those big crowds, as you know."

For a moment Diana sat in stony silence. So he intended to leave her to entertain half London—that half of London that mattered and would talk about it—while he spent a pleasant week philandering down in the country with Adrienne de Gervais, under the aegis of Mrs. Adams' chaperonage!

Very slowly Diana rose to her feet. Her small face was white and set, her little pointed chin thrust out, and her grey eyes were almost black with the intense anger that gripped her.

"Do you mean this?" she asked collectedly.

"Why, of course. Don't you see that I must, Diana? I can't let Adrienne run a risk like that."

"But you can subject your wife to an insult like that without thinking twice about it!"—contemptuously. "It hasn't occurred to you, I suppose, what people will say when they find that I have been left entirely alone to entertain our friends, while my husband passes a pleasant week in the country with Miss de Gervais, and her—chaperon? It's an insult to our guests as well as to me. But I quite understand. I, and my friends, simply don't count when Adrienne de Gervais wants you."

"I can't help it," he answered stubbornly, her scorn moving him less than the waves that break in a shower of foam at the foot of a cliff. "You knew you would have to trust me."

"Trust you?" cried Diana, shaken out of her composure. "Yes! But I never promised to stand trustingly by while you put another woman in my place. This is the end, Max. I've had enough."

A sudden look of apprehension dawned in his eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

"What do I mean?"—bleakly. "Oh, nothing. I never do mean anything, do I? . . . Well, good-bye. I expect you'll have left the house before I come down to-morrow morning. I hope . . . you'll enjoy your visit to the country."

She waited a moment, as though expecting some reply; then, as he neither stirred nor spoke, she went quickly out of the room, closing the door behind her.



CHAPTER XXII

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

"Jerry"—Diana came into her husband's study, where his secretary, who had nothing further to do until his employer's return, was pottering about putting the bookshelves to rights, "Jerry, I'm going to give you a holiday. You can go down to Crailing to-day."

Jerry turned round in surprise.

"But, I say, Diana, I can't, you know—not while Max is away. I'm supposed to make myself useful to you."

"Well, I think you did make yourself—very useful—last night, didn't you?"

"Oh, that!" Jerry shrugged his shoulders. Then, surveying her critically, he added: "You look awfully tired this morning, Di!"

She did. There were purple shadows beneath her eyes, and her face looked white and drawn. The previous evening had been the occasion of her reception, and she had carried it pluckily through single-handed. Quiet and composed, she had moved about amongst her guests, covering Max's absence with a light touch and pretty apology, her demeanour so natural and unembarrassed that the tongues, which would otherwise have wagged swiftly enough, were inevitably stilled.

But the strain had told upon her. This morning she looked haggard and ill, more fit to be in bed than anything else.

"Oh, I shall be all right after a night's rest," she answered cheerfully. "And as to making yourself useful there's really nothing I want you to do for me. But I do want you to go and make your peace with your father, and take Joan to him. I'm sure he'll love her! So I'm writing to Max telling him that I've given you leave of absence. He won't be returning till Saturday at the earliest, and probably not then. If he wants you back on Monday, we'll wire."

Jerry hesitated.

"Are you sure it will be quite all right? I don't really like leaving you."

"Quite all right," she assured him. "I did want you for the party last night, and you were the greatest possible help to me. But now, I don't want you a bit for anything. If you're quick, you can catch the two o'clock down express and"—twinkling—"see Joan this evening."

"Diana, you're a brick!" And Jerry dashed upstairs to pack his suit-case.

Diana heaved a sigh of relief when, a few hours later, a triumphant and joyous Jerry departed in search of a bride. She wanted him out of the house, for that which she had decided to do would be more easily accomplished without the boy's honest, affectionate eyes beseeching her.

All her arrangements were completed, and to-morrow—to-morrow she was going to leave Lilac Lodge for ever. Never again would she share the life of the man who had shown her clearly that, although she was his wife, she counted with him so infinitely less than that other—than Adrienne de Gervais. Her pride might break in the leaving, but it would bend to living under the same roof with him no longer.

Only one thing still remained—to write a letter to her husband and leave it in his study for him to find upon his return. It savoured a little of the theatrical, she reflected, but there seemed no other way possible. She didn't want Max to come in search of her, so she must make it clear to him that she was leaving him deliberately and with no intention of ever returning.

She had told the servants that she was going away on a few days' visit, and after Jerry's departure she gave her maid instructions concerning her packing. She intended to leave the house quite openly the following morning. That was much the easiest method of running away.

"Shall you require me with you, madam?" asked her maid respectfully.

Diana regarded her thoughtfully. She was an excellent servant and thoroughly understood maiding a professional singer; moreover, she was much attached to her mistress. Probably she would be glad of her services later on.

"Oh, if I should make a long stay, I'll send for you, Milling, and you can bring on the rest of my things. I shall want some of my concert gowns the week after next," she told her, in casual tones.

As soon as she had dismissed the girl to her work, Diana made her way into her husband's study, and, seating herself at his desk, drew a sheet of notepaper towards her.

She began to write impulsively, as she did everything else:—

"This is just to say good-bye,"—her pen flew over the paper—"I can't bear our life together any longer, so I'm going away. Perhaps you will blame me because my faith wasn't equal to the task you set it. But I don't think any woman's would be—not if she cared at all. And I did care, Max. It hurts to care as I did—and I'm so tired of being hurt that I'm running away from it. It will be of no use your asking me to return, because I have made up my mind never to come back to you again. I told you that you must choose between Adrienne and me, and you've chosen—Adrienne. I am going to live with Baroni and his sister, Signora Evanci. It is all arranged. They are glad to have me, and it will be much easier for me as regards my singing. So you needn't worry about me.—But perhaps, you wouldn't have done!

"DIANA.

"P.S.—Please don't be vexed with Jerry for going away. I gave him leave of absence myself, and I told him I would make it all right with you.—D."

She folded the letter with a curious kind of precision, slipped it into an envelope, sealed and addressed it, and propped it up against the inkpot on her husband's desk, so that he could not fail to find it.

Then, when it was time to dress for dinner, she went upstairs and let her maid put her into an evening frock, exactly as though nothing out of the ordinary were going on, just as though to-day—the last day she would ever spend in her husband's home—were no different from any other day.

She made a pretence of eating dinner, and afterwards sat in her own little sitting-room, with a book in front of her, of which she read not a single line.

Presently, when she was quite sure that all the servants had gone to bed, she made a pilgrimage through the house, moving reluctantly from room to room, taking a silent farewell of the place where she had known such happiness—and afterwards, such pain.

At last she went to bed, but she felt too restless and keyed up to sleep, so she slipped into a soft, silken wrapper and established herself in a big easy-chair by the fire.

The latter had died down into a dull, red glow, but she prodded the embers into a flame, adding fresh coal, and as the pleasant warmth of it lapped her round, a feeling of gentle languor gradually stole over her, and at length she slept. . . .

She woke with a start. Some one was trying the handle of the door—very quietly, but yet not at all as though making any attempt to conceal the fact.

Something must be amiss, and one of the maids had come to warn her. The possibility that the house was on fire, or that burglars had broken in, flashed through her mind.

She sprang to her feet, and switching on the light, called out sharply:—

"Who is it?"

She had not fastened the lock overnight, and her heart beat in great suffocating throbs as she watched the handle turn.

The next moment some one came quickly into the room and closed the door.

It was Max!

Diana fell back a step, staring incredulously.

"You!" she exclaimed, breathlessly. "You!"

He advanced a few paces into the room. He was very pale, and his face wore a curiously excited expression. His eyes were brilliant—fiercely exultant, yet with an odd gleam of the old, familiar mockery in their depths, as though something in the situation amused him.

"Yes," he said. "Are you surprised to see me?"

"You—you said you were not returning till Saturday," she stammered.

"I found I could get away sooner than I expected, so I caught the last up-train—and here I am."

There was a rakish, devil-may-care note in his voice that filled her with a vague apprehension. Summoning up her courage, she faced him, striving to keep her voice steady.

"And why—why have you come to me—now?"

"I found your note—the note you had left on my desk, so I thought I would like to say good-bye," he answered carelessly.

"You could have waited till to-morrow morning," she returned coldly. "You—you"—she stammered a little, and a faint flush tinged her pallor—"you should not have come . . . here."

A sudden light gleamed in his eyes, mocking and triumphant.

"It is my wife's room. A husband"—slowly—"has certain rights."

"Ah-h!" She caught her breath, and her hand flew her throat.

"And since," he continued cruelly, never taking his eye from her face, "since those rights are to be rescinded to-morrow for ever—why, then, to-night—"

"No! . . . No!" She shrank from him, her hands stretched out as though to ward him off.

"You've said 'no' to me for the last six months," he said grimly. "But—that's ended now."

Her eyes searched his face wildly, reading only a set determination in it. Slowly, desperately, she backed away from him; then, suddenly, she made a little rush, and, reaching the door, pulled at the handle. But it remained fast shut.

"It's locked!" she cried, frantically tugging at it. She flashed round upon him. "The key! Where's the key?"

The words came sobbingly.

He put his fingers in his pocket.

"Here," he answered coolly.

Despairingly she retreated from the door. There was an expression in his eyes that terrified her—a furnace heat of passion barely held in check. The Englishman within him was in abeyance; the hot, foreign blood was leaping in his veins.

"Max!" she faltered appealingly.

He crossed swiftly to her side, gripping her soft, bare arms in a hold so fierce that his fingers scored them with red weals.

"By God, Diana! What do you think I'm made of?" he burst out violently. "For months you've shut yourself away from me and I've borne it, waiting—waiting always for you to come back to me. Do you think it's been easy?" His limbs were shaking, and his eyes burned into hers. "And now—now you tell me that you've done with me. . . You take everything from me! My love is to count for nothing!"

"You never loved me!" she protested, with low, breathless vehemence. "It—it could never have been love."

For a moment he was silent, staring at her.

Then he laughed.

"Very well. Call it desire, passion—what you will!" he exclaimed brutally. "But—you married me, you know!"

She cowered away from him, looking to right and left like a trapped animal seeking to escape, but he held her ruthlessly, forcing her to face him.

All at once, her nerve gave way, and she began to cry—helpless, despairing weeping that rocked the slight form in his grasp. As she stood thus, the soft silk of her wrapper falling in straight folds about her; her loosened hair shadowing her white face, she looked pathetically small and young, and Errington suddenly relinquished his hold of her and stepped back, his hands slowly clenching in the effort not to take her in his arms.

Something tugged at his heart, pulling against the desire that ran riot in his veins—something of the infinite tenderness of love which exists side by side with its passion.

"Don't look like that," he said hoarsely. "I'll—I'll go."

He crossed the room, reeling a little in his stride, and, unlocking the door, flung it open.

She stared at him, incredulous relief in her face, while the tears still slid unchecked down her cheeks.

"Max—" she stammered.

"Yes," he returned. "You're free of me. I don't suppose you'll believe it, but I love you too much to . . . take . . . what you won't give."

A minute later the door closed behind him and she heard his footsteps descending the stairs.

With a low moan she sank down beside the bed, her face hidden in her hands, sobbing convulsively.



CHAPTER XXIII

PAIN

Summer had come and gone, and Diana, after a brief visit to Crailing, had returned to town for the winter season.

The Crailing visit had not been altogether without its embarrassments. It was true that Red Gables was closed and shuttered, so that she had run no risk of meeting either her husband or Adrienne, but Jerry, in the character of an engaged young man, had been staying at the Rectory, and he had allowed Diana to see plainly that his sympathies lay pre-eminently with Max, and that he utterly condemned her lack of faith in her husband.

"Some day, Diana, you'll be sorry that you chucked one of the best chaps in the world," he told her, with a fierce young championship that was rather touching, warring, as it did, with his honest affection for Diana herself. "Oh! It makes me sick! You two ought to have had such a splendid life together."

Rather wistfully, Diana asked the Rector if he, too, blamed her entirely for what had occurred. But Alan Stair's wide charity held no room for censure.

"My dear," he told her, "I don't think I want to blame either you or Max. The situation was difficult, and you weren't quite strong enough to cope with it. That's all. But"—with one of his rare smiles that flashed out like sunshine after rain—"you haven't reached the end of the chapter yet."

Diana shook her head.

"I think we have, Pobs. I, for one, shall never reopen the pages. My musical work is going to fill my life in future."

Stair's eyes twinkled with a quiet humour.

"Sponge cake is filling, my dear, very," he responded. "But it's not satisfying—like bread."

Since Diana had left her husband, fate had so willed it that they had never chanced to meet. She had appeared very little in society, excusing herself on the plea that her professional engagements demanded all her energies. And certainly, since the immediate and overwhelming success which she had achieved at Covent Garden, her operatic work had made immense demands both upon her time and physical strength.

But, with the advent of autumn, the probabilities of a meeting between husband and wife were increased a hundredfold, since Diana's engagements included a considerable number of private receptions in addition to her concert work, and she never sang at a big society crush without an inward apprehension that she might encounter Max amongst the guests.

She shrank from meeting him again as a wounded man shrinks from an accidental touch upon his hurt. It had been easy enough, in the first intolerant passion which had overwhelmed her, to contemplate life apart from him. Indeed, to leave him had seemed the only obvious course to save her from the daily flagellation of her love, the hourly insult to her dignity, that his relations with Adrienne de Gervais and the whole mystery which hung about his actions had engendered.

But when once the cord had been cut, and life in its actuality had to be faced apart from him, Diana found that love, hurt and buffeted though it may be, still remains love, a thing of flame and fire, its very essence a desire for the loved one's presence.

Every fibre of her being cried aloud for Max, and there were times when the longing for the warm, human touch of his hand, for the sound of his voice, grew almost unbearable. Yet any meeting between them could be but a barren reminder of the past, revitalising the dull ache of longing into a quick and overmastering agony, and, realising this, Diana recoiled from the possibility with a fear almost bordering upon panic.

She achieved a certain feeling of security in the fact that she had made her home with Baroni and his sister. Signora Evanci mothered her and petted her and fussed over her, much as she did over Baroni himself, and the old maestro, aware of the tangle of Diana's matrimonial affairs, and ambitious for her artistic future, was likely to do his utmost to avert a meeting between husband and wife—since emotional crises are apt to impair the voice.

From Baroni's point of view, the happenings of life were chiefly of importance in so far as they tended towards the perfecting of the artiste.

"Love is good," he had said on one occasion. "No one can interpret romantic music who has not loved. And a broken heart in the past, and plenty of good food in the present—these may very well make a great artiste. But a heart that keeps on breaking, that is not permitted to heal itself—no, that is not good. A la fin, the voice breaks also."

Hence he regarded his favourite pupil with considerable anxiety. To his experienced eye it was palpable that the happenings of her married life had tried Diana's strength almost to breaking point, and that the enthusiasm and energy with which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the other—would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way, culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her horizon that the memories of the past gradually receded into insignificance.

The cup of fame, newly held to her lips, could not but prove an intoxicating draught. There was a rushing excitement, an exhilaration about her life as a well-known public singer, which acted as a constant stimulus. The enthusiastic acclamations with which she was everywhere received, the adulation that invariably surrounded her, and the intense joy which, as a genuine artist, she derived from the work itself, all acted as a narcotic to the pain of memory, and out of these she tried to build up a new life for herself, a life in which love should have neither part nor lot, but wherein added fame and recognition was to be the ultimate goal.

Her singing had improved; there was a new depth of feeling in her interpretation which her own pain and suffering had taught her, and it was no infrequent thing for part of her audience to be moved to tears, wistfully reminded of some long-dead romance, when she sang "The Haven of Memory"—a song which came to be associated with her name much in the same way that "Home, Sweet Home" was associated with another great singer, whose golden voice gave new meaning to the familiar words.

Olga Lermontof still remained her accompanist. For some unfathomed reason she no longer flung out the bitter gibes and thrusts at Errington which had formerly sprung so readily to her lips, and Diana grimly ascribed this forbearance to an odd kind of delicacy—the generosity of the victor who refuses to triumph openly over the vanquished!

Once, in a bitter mood, Diana had taxed her with it.

"You must feel satisfied now that you have achieved your object," she told her.

The Russian, idly improvising on the piano, dropped her hands from the keys, and her eyes held a queer kind of pain in them as she made answer.

"And what exactly did you think my object was?" she queried.

"Surely it was obvious?" replied Diana lightly. "When Max and I were together, you never ceased to sow discord between us—though why you hated him so, I cannot tell—and now that we have separated, I suppose you are content."

"Content?" Olga laughed shortly. "I never wanted you to separate. And"—she hesitated—"I never hated Max Errington."

"I don't believe it!" The assertion leaped involuntarily from Diana's lips.

"I can understand that," Olga spoke with a curious kind of patience. "But, believe it or not as you will, I was working for quite other ends. And I've failed," she added dispiritedly.

With the opening of the autumn season and the ensuing rebirth of musical and theatrical life, London received an unexpected shock. It was announced that Adrienne de Gervais was retiring from her position as leading lady at the Premier Theatre, and for a few days after the launching of this thunderbolt the theatre-going world hummed with the startling news, while a dozen rumours were set on foot to account for what must surely prove little less than a disaster to the management of the Premier.

But, as usual, after the first buzz of surprise and excitement had spent itself, people settled down, and reluctantly accepted the official explanation furnished by the newspapers—namely, that the popular actress had suffered considerably in health from the strain of several successive heavy seasons and intended to winter abroad.

To Diana the news yielded an odd sense of comfort. Somehow the thought of Adrienne's absence from England seemed to bring Max nearer, to make him more her own again. Even though they were separated, there was a certain consolation in the knowledge that the woman whose close friendship with her husband had helped to make shipwreck of their happiness was going out of his life, though it might be only for a little time.

One day, impelled by an irresistible desire to test the truth of the newspaper reports, Diana took her way to Somervell Street, pausing opposite the house that had been Adrienne's. She found it invested with a curious air of unfamiliarity, facing the street with blank and shuttered windows, like blind eyes staring back at her unrecognisingly.

So it was true! Adrienne had gone away and the house was empty and closed.

Diana retraced her steps homeward, conscious of a queer feeling of satisfaction. Often the thought that Max and Adrienne might be together had tortured her almost beyond endurance, adding a keener edge to the pain of separation.

Pain! Life seemed made up of pain these days. Sometimes she wondered how much a single human being was capable of bearing.

It was months—an eternity—since she and Max had parted, and still her heart cried out for him, fighting the bitter anger and distrust that had driven her from him.

She felt she could have borne it more easily had he died. Then the remembrance of his love would still have been hers to hold and keep, something most precious and unspoilt. But now, each memory of their life together was tarnished with doubt and suspicion and mistrust. She had put him to the test, bade him choose betwixt her and Adrienne, claiming his confidence as her right—and he had chosen Adrienne and declined to trust her with his secret.

She told herself that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper self-respect" defile the face of Love.

She had turned desperately to her work for distraction from the ceaseless torture of her thoughts, but not all the work in the world had been able to silence the cry of her heart.

For work can do no more than fill the day, and though Diana feverishly crammed each day so full that there was little time to think and remember, the nights remained—the interminable nights, when she was alone with her own soul, and when the memories which the day's work had beaten back came pressing in upon her.

Oh, God! The nights—the endless, intolerable nights! . . .



CHAPTER XXIV

THE VISION OF LOVE

A week after her visit to Somervell Street, the thing which Diana had dreaded came to pass.

She was attending a reception at the French Embassy, and as she made her way through the crowded rooms, followed by Olga Lermontof—who frequently added to the duties of accompanist those of dame de compagnie to the great prima donna—she came suddenly face to face with Max.

To many of us the anticipation of an unpleasant happening is far more agonising than the actual thing itself. The mind, brooding apprehensively upon what may conceivably occur, exaggerates the possibilities of the situation, enhancing all the disagreeable details, and oblivious of any mitigating circumstances which may, quite probably, accompany it. There is sound sense and infinite comfort, if you look for it, in the old saying which bids us not to cross our bridges till we come to them.

The fear of the unknown, the unexperienced, is a more haunting, insidious fear than any other, and sometimes one positively longs to hasten the advent of an unwelcome ordeal, in order that the worst may be known and the menace of the future be transformed into a memory of the past.

So it was with Diana. She had been for so long beset by her fear of the first meeting that she experienced a sensation almost of relief when her eyes fell at last upon the tall figure of her husband.

He was deep in conversation with the French Ambassador at the moment, but as Diana approached it was as though some sensitive, invisible live wire had vibrated, apprising him of her nearness, and he looked up suddenly, his blue eyes gazing straight into hers.

To Diana, the brief encounter proved amazingly simple and easy in contrast with the shrinking apprehensions she had formed. A slight bow from her, its grave return from him, and the dreaded moment was past.

It was only afterwards that she realised, with a sense of sick dismay, how terribly he had altered. She caught at the accompanist's arm with nervous force.

"Olga!" she whispered. "Did you see?"

The Russian's expression answered her. Her face wore a curious stunned look, and her mouth twitched as she tried to control the sudden trembling of her lips.

"Come outside—on to this balcony." Olga spoke with a fierce imperativeness as she saw Diana sway uncertainly and her face whiten.

Once outside in the cool shelter of the balcony, dimly lit by swaying Chinese lanterns, Diana sank into a chair, shaken and unnerved. For an instant her eyes strayed back to where, through the open French window, she could see Max still conversing with the Ambassador, but she averted them swiftly.

The change in him hurt her like the sudden stab of a knife. His face was worn and lined; there was something ascetic-looking in the hollowed line from cheek-bone to chin and in the stern, austere closing of the lips, while the eyes—the mocking blue eyes with the laughter always lurking at the back of them—held an expression of deep, unalterable sadness.

"Olga!" The word broke from Diana's white lips like a cry of appeal, tremulous and uncertain.

But Miss Lermontof made no response. She seemed quite unmoved by the distress of the woman sitting huddled in the chair before her, and her light green eyes shone with a curious savage glint like the eyes of a cat.

Diana spoke again nervously.

"Are you—angry with me?"

"Angry!" The Russian almost spat out the word. "Angry! Don't you see what you're doing?"

"What I'm doing?" repeated Diana. "What am I doing?"

Olga replied with a grim incisiveness.

"You're killing Max—that's all. This—this is going to break him—break him utterly."

There was a long silence, and the dewy dusk of the night, shaken into pearly mist where the flickering light of the Chinese lanterns illumined it, seemed to close round the two women, like a filmy curtain, shutting them off from the chattering throng in the adjoining room.

Presently a cart rattled past in the street below, rasping the tense silence.

Diana lifted her head.

"I didn't know!" she said helplessly. "I didn't know! . . ."

"And yet you professed to love him!" Olga spoke consideringly, an element of contemptuous wonder in her voice.

The memory of words that Max had uttered long ago stirred in Diana's mind.

"You don't know what love means!"

Limned against the darkness she could see once more the sun-warmed beach at Culver Point, the blue, sparkling sea with the white gulls wheeling above it, and Max—Max standing tall and straight beside her, with a shaft of sunlight flickering across his hair, and love illimitable in his eyes.

"You don't know what love means!"

The words penetrated to her innermost consciousness, cleaving their way sheer through the fog of doubt and mistrust and pride as the sharp blade of the surgeon's knife cuts deep into a festering wound. And before their clarifying, essential truth, Diana's soul recoiled in dumb dismay.

No, she hadn't known what love meant—love, which, with an exquisite unreasonableness, believes when there is ground for doubt—hadn't understood it as even this cynical, bitter-tongued Russian understood it. And she recognised the scorn on Olga's white, contemptuous face as the unlovely sheath of an ideal of love immeasurably beyond her own achieving.

The vision of Culver Point faded away, and an impalpable wall of darkness seemed to close about her. Dimly, as though it were some one else's voice speaking, she heard herself say slowly:—

"I thought I loved him." Then, after a pause, "Will you go? Please go. I should like to be . . . quiet . . . a little while."

For a moment Olga gazed down at her, eagerly, almost hungrily, as though silently beseeching her. Then, still silently, she went away.

Diana sat very still. Above her, the gay-coloured Chinese lanterns swayed to and fro in the little breeze that drifted up the street, and above again, far off in the sombre sky, the stars looked down—pitiless, unmoved, as they have looked down through all the ages upon the pigmy joys and sufferings of humanity.

For the first time Diana was awake to the limitations she had set to love.

The meeting with her husband had shaken her to the very foundations of her being, the shock of his changed appearance sweeping away at a single blow the whole fabric of artificial happiness that she had been trying to build up.

She had thought that the wound in her heart would heal, that she could teach herself to forget the past. And lo! At the first sight of his face the old love and longing had reawakened with a strength she was powerless to withstand.

The old love, but changed into something immeasurably more than it had ever been before, and holding in its depths a finer understanding. And with this clearer vision came a sudden new knowledge—a knowledge fraught with pain and yet bearing deep within it an unutterable sense of joy.

Max had cared all the time—cared still! It was written in the lines of suffering on his face, in the quiet endurance of the close-shut mouth. Despite the bitter, pitiful misunderstandings of their married life, despite his inexplicable friendship for Adrienne, despite all that had gone before, Diana was sure, in the light of this larger understanding which had come to her, that through it all he had loved her. With an absolute certainty of conviction, she knew that it was her hand which had graved those fresh lines about his mouth, brought that look of calm sadness to his eyes, and the realisation held a strange mingling of exquisite joy and keen anguish.

She hid her face in her hands, hid it from the stars and the shrouding dark, tremulously abashed at the wonderful significance of love.

She almost laughed to think how she had allowed so small a thing as the secret which Max could not tell her to corrode and eat into the heart of happiness. Looking back from the standpoint she had now gained, it seemed so pitifully mean and paltry, a profanation of the whole inner, hidden meaning of love.

So long as she and Max cared for each other, nothing else mattered, nothing in the whole world. And the long battle between love and pride—between love, that had turned her days and nights into one endless ache of longing to return to Max, and pride, that had barred the way inflexibly—was over, done with.

Love had won, hands down. She would go back to Max, and all thought that it might be weak-minded of her, humiliating to her self-respect, was swept aside. Love, the great teacher, had brought her through the dark places where the lesser gods hold sway, out into the light of day, and she knew that to return to Max, to give herself afresh to him, would be the veritable triumph, of love itself.

She would go back, back to the shelter of his love which had been waiting for her all the time, unswerving and unreproaching. She had read it in his eyes when they had met her own an hour ago.

"I want you—-body and soul I want you!" he had told her there by the cliffs at Culver.

And she had not given him all her soul. She had kept back that supreme belief in the beloved which is an integral part of love. But now, now she would go to him and give with both hands royally—faith and trust, blindly, as love demanded.

She smiled a little. Happiness and the haven of Max's arms seemed very near her just then.

She was very silent as she and Olga Lermontof drove home together from the Embassy, but just at the last, when the limousine stopped at Baroni's house, she leaned closer to Olga in the semi-darkness, and whispered a little breathlessly:—

"I'm going back to him, Olga."

Somehow the mere putting of it into words seemed to give it substance, convert it into an actual fact that could be talked about, just like the weather, or one's favourite play, or any other commonplace matter which can be spoken of because it has a knowledgeable existence. And the Russian's quick "Thank God!" set the seal of assuredness upon it.

"Yes—thank God," answered Diana simply.

The car, which was to take the accompanist on to Brutton Square, slipped away down the lamp-lit street, and Diana fled upstairs to her room.

She must be alone—alone with her thoughts. She no longer dreaded the night and its quiet solitude. It was a solitude pervaded by a deep, abiding peace, the anteroom of happiness.

To-morrow she would go to Max, and tell him that love had taught her belief and faith—all that he had asked of her and that she had so failed to give.

She lay long awake, gazing into the dark, dreamily conscious of utter peace and calm. To-morrow . . . to-morrow . . . Freely her eyes closed and she slept. Once she stirred and smiled a little in her sleep while the word "Max" fluttered from between her lips, almost as though it had been a prayer.



CHAPTER XXV

BREAKING-POINT

When Diana woke the following morning it was to a drowsy sense of utter peace and content. She wondered vaguely what had given rise to it. Usually, when she came back to the waking world, it was with a shrinking almost akin to terror that a new day had begun and must be lived through—twelve empty, meaningless hours of it.

As full consciousness returned, the remembrance of yesterday's meeting with Max, and of all that had succeeded it, flashed into her mind like a sudden ray of sunlight, and she realised that what had tinged her thoughts with rose-colour was the quiet happiness, bred of her determination to return to her husband, which had lain stored at the back of her brain during the hours of unconsciousness.

She sat up in bed, vividly, joyously awake, just as her maid came in with her breakfast tray.

"Make haste, Milling," she exclaimed, a thrill of eager excitement in her voice. "It's a lovely morning, and there's so much going to happen to-day that I can't waste any time over breakfast."

It was the old, impetuous Diana who spoke, impulsively carried away by the emotion of the moment.

"Is there, madam?" Milling, arranging the breakfast things on a little table beside the bed, regarded her mistress affectionately. It was long, very long, since she had seen her with that look of happy anticipation in her face—never since the good days at Lilac Lodge, before she had quarrelled so irrevocably with her husband—and the maid wondered whether it foretokened a reconciliation. "Is there, madam? Then I'm glad it's a fine day. It's a good omen."

Diana smiled at her.

"Yes," she repeated contentedly. "It's a good omen."

Milling paused on her way out of the room.

"If you please, madam, Signor Baroni would like to know at what time you will be ready to rehearse your songs for to-night, so that he can telephone through to Miss Lermontof?"

To rehearse! Diana's face clouded suddenly. She had entirely forgotten that she had promised to give her services that night at a reception, organised in aid of some charity by the Duchess of Linfield—the shrewish old woman who had paid Diana her first tribute of tears—and the recollection of it sounded the knell to her hopes of seeing Max that day. The morning must perforce be devoted to practising, the afternoon to the necessary rest which Baroni insisted upon, and after that there would be only time to dress and partake of a light meal before she drove to the Duchess's house.

It would not be possible to see Max! Even had there been time she dared not risk the probable consequences to her voice which the strain and emotion of such an interview must necessarily carry in their train.

For a moment she felt tempted to break her engagement, to throw it over at the last instant and telephone to the Duchess to find a substitute. And then her sense of duty to her public—to the big, warm-hearted public who had always welcomed and supported her—pushed itself to the fore, forbidding her to take this way out of the difficulty.

How could she, who had never yet broken a contract when her appearance involved a big fee, fail now, on an occasion when she had consented to give her services, and when it was her name alone on the programme which had charmed so much money from the pockets of the wealthy, that not a single seat of all that could be crowded into the Duchess's rooms remained unsold? Oh, it was impossible!

Had it meant the renouncing of the biggest fee ever offered her, Diana, would have impetuously sacrificed it and flung her patrons overboard. But it meant something more than that. It was a debt of honour, her professional honour.

After all, the fulfilment of her promise to sing would only mean setting her own affairs aside for twenty-four hours, and somehow she felt that Max would understand and approve. He would never wish to snatch a few earlier hours of happiness if they must needs be purchased at the price of a broken promise. But her heart sank as she faced the only alternative.

She turned to Milling, the happy exultation that had lit her eyes suddenly quenched.

"Ask the Maestro kindly to 'phone Miss Lermontof that I shall be ready at eleven," she said quietly.

In some curious way this unlooked-for upset to her plans seemed to have cast a shadow across her path. The warm surety of coming happiness which had lapped her round receded, and a vague, indefinable apprehension invaded her consciousness. It was as though she sensed something sinister that lay in wait for her round the next corner, and all her efforts to recapture the radiant exultation of her mood of yestereve, to shake off the nervous dread that had laid hold of her, failed miserably.

Her breakfast was standing untouched on the table beside her bed. She regarded it distastefully. Then, recalling with a wry smile Baroni's dictum that "good food, and plenty of good food, means voice," she reluctantly began to eat, idly turning over the while the pages of one of the newspapers which Milling had placed beside the breakfast tray. It was an illustrated weekly, and numbered amongst its staff an enterprising young journalist, possessed of an absolute genius for nosing out such matters as the principal people concerned in them particularly desired kept secret. Those the enterprising young journalist's paper served up piping-hot in their Tattle of the Town column—a column denounced by the pilloried few and devoured with eager interest by the rest of the world.

Diana, sipping her coffee, turned to it half-heartedly, hoping to find some odd bit of news that might serve to distract her thoughts.

There were the usual sly hits at several well-known society women whose public charities covered a multitude of private sins, followed by a very inadequately veiled reference to the chief actors in a recent divorce case, and then—

Diana's eyes glued themselves to the printed page before her. Very deliberately she set down her cup on the tray beside her, and taking up the paper again, re-read the paragraph which had so suddenly riveted her attention. It ran as follows:—

"Is it true that the nom de plume of a dramatist, well-known in London circles, masks the identity of the son of a certain romantic royal duke who contracted a morganatic marriage with one of the most beautiful Englishwomen of the seventies?

"It would be curious if there proved to be a connecting link between this whisper and the recent disappearance from the stage of the popular actress who has been so closely associated with the plays emanating from the gifted pen of that same dramatist.

"Interested readers should carefully watch forthcoming events in the little state of Ruvania."

Diana stared at the newspaper incredulously, and a half-stifled exclamation broke from her.

There was—there could be—no possible doubt to whom the paragraph bore reference. "A well-known dramatist and the popular actress so closely associated with his works"—why, to any one with the most superficial knowledge of plays and players of the moment, it was as obvious as though the names had been written in capitals.

Max and Adrienne! Their identities linked together and woven into a fresh tissue of mystery and innuendo!

Diana smiled a little at the suggestion that Max might be the son of a royal duke. It was so very far-fetched—fantastic in the extreme.

And then, all at once, she remembered Olga's significant query of long ago: "Have you ever asked him who he is?" and Max's stern refusal to answer the question when she had put it to him.

At the time it had only given an additional twist to the threads of the intolerable web of mystery which had enmeshed her married life. But now it suddenly blazed out like a beacon illumining the dark places. Supposing it were true—supposing Max had been masquerading under another name all the time—then this suggestive little paragraph contained a clue from which she might perhaps unravel the whole hateful mystery.

Her brows drew together as she puzzled over the matter. This history of a morganatic marriage—it held a faint ring of familiarity. Vaguely she recollected having heard the story of some royal duke who had married an Englishwoman many years ago.

For a few minutes she racked her brain, unable to place the incident. Then, her eyes falling absently upon the newspaper once more, the last word of the paragraph suddenly unlocked the rusty door of memory.

Ruvania! She remembered the story now! There had once been a younger brother and heir of a reigning grand-duke of Ruvania who had fallen so headlong in love with a beautiful Englishwoman that he had renounced his royal state and his claims to the grand ducal throne, and had married the lady of his choice, thereafter living the life of a simple country gentleman.

The affair had taken place a good many years prior to Diana's entry into life, but at the time it had made such a romantic appeal to the sentimental heart of the world at large that it had never been quite forgotten, and had been retold in Diana's hearing on more than one occasion.

Indeed, she recollected having once seen a newspaper containing an early portrait of a family group composed of Duke Boris and his morganatic wife and children. There had been two of the latter, a boy and a girl, and Diana suddenly realised, with an irrepressible little flutter of tender excitement, that if the fantastic story hinted at in Tattle of the Town, were true, then the boy whom, years ago, she had seen pictured in the photograph must have been actually Max himself.

And—again if it were true—how naturally and easily it explained that little unconscious air of hauteur and authority that she had so often observed in him—the "lordly" air upon which she had laughingly remarked to Pobs, when describing the man who had been her companion on that memorable railway journey, when death had drawn very near them both and then had passed them by.

Her thoughts raced onward, envisaging the possibilities involved.

There were no dukes of Ruvania now; that she knew. The little State, close on the borders of Russia, had been—like so many of the smaller Eastern States—convulsed by a revolution, some ten years ago, and since then had been governed by a republic.

Was the explanation of all that had so mystified her to be found in the fact that Max was a political exile?

The Tattle of the Town paragraph practically suggested, that the affairs of the "well-known dramatist" were in some way bound up with the destiny of Ruvania. That was indicated plainly enough in the reference to "forthcoming events."

Diana's head whirled with the throng of confused ideas that poured in upon her.

And Adrienne de Gervais? What part did she play in this strange medley? Tattle of the Town assigned her one. Max and Adrienne and Ruvania were all inextricably tangled up together in the thought-provoking paragraph.

Suddenly, Diana's heart gave a great leap as a possible explanation of the whole matter sprang into her mind. There had been two children of the morganatic marriage, a son and a daughter. Was it conceivable that Adrienne de Gervais was the daughter?

Adrienne, Max's sister! That would account for his inexplicably close friendship with her, his devotion to her welfare, and—if she, like himself, were exiled—the secrecy which he had maintained.

Slowly the conviction that this was the true explanation of all that had caused her such bitter heartburning in the unhappy past grew and deepened in Diana's mind. A chill feeling of dismay crept about her heart. If it were true, then how hideously—how unforgivably—she had misjudged her husband!

She drew a sharp, agonised breath, her shaking fingers gripping the bedclothes like a frightened child's.

"Oh, not that! Don't let it be that!" she whispered piteously.

She looked round the room with scared eyes. Who could help her—tell her the truth—set at rest this new fear which had assailed her? There must be some one . . . some one. . . . Yes, there was Olga! She knew—had known Max's secret all along. But would she speak? Would she reveal the truth? Something—heaven knew what!—had kept her silent hitherto, save for the utterance of those maddening taunts and innuendoes which had so often lodged in Diana's heart and festered there.

Feverishly Diana sprang out of bed and began to dress, flinging on her clothes in a very frenzy of haste. She would see Olga, and beg, pray, beseech her, if necessary, to tell her all she knew.

If she failed, if the Russian woman obstinately denied her, she would know no peace of mind—no rest. She felt she had reached breaking-point—she could endure no more.

But she would not fail. When Olga came—and she would be here soon, very soon now—she would play up the knowledge she had gleaned from the newspaper for all it was worth, and she would force the truth from her, willing or unwilling.

Whether that truth spelt heaven, or the utter, final wrecking of all her life, she must know it.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE REAPING

Half an hour later Diana descended to the big music-room, where she usually rehearsed, to find Olga Lermontof already awaiting her there.

By a sheer effort of will she had fought down the storm of emotion which had threatened to overwhelm her, and now, as she greeted her accompanist, she was quite cool and composed, though rather pale and with tired shadows beneath her eyes.

There was something almost unnatural in her calm, and the shrewd Russian eyed her with a sudden apprehension. This was not the same woman whom she had left last night, thrilling and softly tremulous with love.

She began speaking quickly, an undercurrent of suppressed excitement in her tones.

"There's some mistake, isn't there? You don't want me—this morning?"

Diana regarded her composedly.

"Certainly I want you—to rehearse for to-night."

"To rehearse? Rehearse?" Olga's voice rose in a sharp crescendo of amazement. "Surely"—bending forward to peer into Diana's face—"surely you are not going to keep Max waiting while you—rehearse?"

"It's impossible for us to meet to-day," replied Diana steadily. "I had—forgotten—the Duchess's reception."

Olga made a gesture of impatience.

"But you must meet to-day," she said imperiously. "You must! To-morrow it will be too late."

"Too late? How too late?"

Miss Lermontof hesitated a moment. Then she said quietly:—

"I happen to know that Max is leaving England to-night."

Diana shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, he will come back, I suppose."

The other looked at her curiously.

"Diana, what has come to you? You are so—changed—since last night."

"We're told that 'night unto night showeth knowledge,'" retorted Diana bitterly. "Perhaps my knowledge has increased since—last night." She watched the puzzled expression deepen on Olga's face. Then she added: "So I can afford to wait a little longer to see Max."

Again Miss Lermontof hesitated. Then, as though impelled to speak despite her better judgment, she burst out impetuously:—

"But you can't! You can't wait. He isn't coming back again."

There was a queer tense note in Diana's voice as she played her first big card.

"Then I suppose I shall have to follow him to—Ruvania," she said very quietly.

"To Ruvania?" Olga repeated, and by the sudden narrowing of her eyes, as though she were all at once "on guard," Diana knew that her shot in the dark had gone home. "What do you mean? Why—Ruvania?"

Diana faced her squarely. Despite her feverish desire to wring the truth from the other woman, she had herself well in hand, and when she spoke it was with a certain dignity.

"Don't you think that the time for pretence and hypocrisy has gone by? You know—all that I ought to know. Now that even the newspapers are aware of Max's—and Adrienne's—connection with Ruvania, do you still think it necessary that I, his wife, should be kept in the dark?"

"The newspapers?" Olga spoke with sudden excitement. "How much do they know? What do they say? . . . After all, though," she added more quietly, "it doesn't much matter—now. Everything is settled—for good or ill. But if the papers had got hold of it sooner—"

"Well?" queried Diana coolly, intent on driving her into giving up her knowledge. "What if they had?"

Olga surveyed her ironically.

"What if they had? Only that, if they had, probably you wouldn't have possessed a husband a few hours later. A knife in the back is a quick road out of life, you know."

Diana caught her breath, and her self-command gave way suddenly.

"For God's sake, what do you mean? Tell me—you must tell me—everything, everything! I can't bear it any longer. I know too much—" She broke off with a dry, choking sob.

Olga's face softened.

"You poor child!" she muttered to herself. Then, aloud, she said gently: "Tell me—how much do you know?"

With an effort Diana mastered herself again.

"I know Max's parentage," she began steadily.

"You know that?"—with quick surprise.

"Yes. And that he has a sister."

Olga nodded, smiling rather oddly.

"Yes. He has a sister," she admitted.

"And that he is involved in Ruvanian politics. Something is going to happen there, in Ruvania—"

"Yes to that also. Something is going to happen there. The republic is down and out, and the last of the Mazaroffs is going to receive back the ducal crown." There was a tinge of mockery in Miss Lermontof's curt tones.

Diana gave a cry of dismay.

"Not—not Max?" she stammered. All at once, he seemed to have receded very far away from her, to have been snatched into a world whither she would never be able to follow him.

"Max?" Olga's face darkened. "No—not Max, but Nadine Mazaroff."

"Nadine Mazaroff?" repeated Diana uncomprehendingly. "Who is Nadine Mazaroff?"

"She is the woman you knew as Adrienne de Gervais."

"Adrienne? Is that her name—Nadine Mazaroff? Then—then"—Diana's breath came unevenly—"she's not Max's sister?"

"No"—shortly. "She is—or will be within a week—the Grand Duchess of Ruvania."

"Go on," urged Diana, as the other paused. "Go on. Tell me everything. I know so much already that it can't be breaking faith with any one for you to tell me the whole truth now."

Olga looked at her consideringly.

"No. I suppose, since the journalists have ferreted it out, it won't be a secret much longer," she conceded grimly. "And, in any case, it doesn't matter now. It's all settled." She sighed. "Besides"—with a faint smile—"if I tell you, it will save Max a long story when you meet."

"Yes," replied Diana, an odd expression flitting across her face. "It will save Max a long story—when we meet. Tell me," she continued, with an effort, "tell me about—Nadine Mazaroff."

"Nadine?" cried Olga, with sudden violence. "Nadine Mazaroff is the woman I hate more than any other on this earth!" Her eyes gleamed malevolently. "She stands where Max should stand. If it were not for her the Ruvanian people would have accepted him as their ruler—and overlooked his English mother. But Nadine is the legitimate heir, the child of the late Grand Duke—and Max is thrust out of the succession, because our father's marriage was a morganatic one."

"Your father?"

"Yes"—with a brief smile—"I am the sister whose existence you discovered."

For a moment Diana was silent. It had never occurred to her to connect Max and Olga in any way; the latter had always seemed to her to be more or less at open enmity with him.

Immediately her heart contracted with the old haunting fear. What, then, was Adrienne to Max?

"Go on," she whispered at last, under her breath. "Go on."

"I've never forgiven my father"—Olga spoke with increasing passion. "For his happiness with his English wife, Max and I have paid every day of our lives! . . . As soon as I was of age, I refused the State allowance granted me as a daughter of Boris Mazaroff, and left the Ruvanian Court. Since then I've lived in England as plain Miss Lermontof, and earned my own living. Not one penny of their tainted money will I touch!"—fiercely.

"But Max—Max!" broke in Diana. "Tell me about Max!" Olga's personal quarrel with her country held no interest for a woman on the rack.

"Max?" Olga shrugged her shoulders. "Max is either a saint or a fool—God knows which! For his loyalty to the House that branded him with a stigma, and to the woman who robbed him of his heritage, has never failed."

"You mean—Adrienne?" whispered Diana, as Olga paused an instant, shaken by emotion.

"Yes, I mean Adrienne—Nadine Mazaroff. Her parents were killed in the Ruvanian revolution—butchered by the mob on the very steps of the palace. But she herself was saved by my brother. At the time the revolt broke out, he was living in Borovnitz, the capital, and he rushed off to the palace and contrived to rescue Nadine and get her away to England. Since then, while the Royalist party have been working day and night for the restoration of the Mazaroffs, Max has watched over her safety." She paused, resuming with an accent of jealous resentment: "And it has been no easy task. German money backed the revolution, in the hope that when Ruvania grew tired of her penny-farthing republic—as she was bound to do—Germany might step in again and convert Ruvania into a little dependent State under Prussia. There's always a German princeling handy for any vacant throne!"—contemptuously—"and in the event of a big European War, Ruvania in German hands would provide an easy entrance into Russia. So you see, Nadine, alive and in safety, was a perpetual menace to the German plans. For some years she was hidden in a convent down in the West Country, not very far from Crailing, and after a while people came to believe that she, too, had perished in the revolution. It was only then that Max allowed her to emerge from the convent, and by that time she had grown from a young, unformed girl into a woman, so that there was little danger of her being recognised by any casual observer—or even by the agents of the anti-royalist party."

"Max seems to have done—a great deal—for her," said Diana, speaking slowly and rather painfully.

Olga flashed her a brief look of understanding.

"Yes," she said quietly. "He has done everything that patriotism demanded of him—even"—meaningly—"to the sacrificing of his own personal happiness. . . . It was entirely his idea that Nadine should pass as an actress. She always had dramatic talent, and when she came out of the convent he arranged that she should study for the stage. He believed that there was no safer way of concealing her identity than by providing her with an entirely different one—and a very obvious one at that. And events have proved him right. After all, people only become suspicious when they see signs of secrecy, and there is no one more constantly in the public eye than an actress. The last place you would look for a missing grand duchess is on the English stage! The very daring and publicity of the thing made it a success. No one guessed who she was, and only I, I and Carlo Baroni, knew. Oh, yes, I was sworn to secrecy"—as she read the question in Diana's eye—"and when I saw you and Max drifting apart, and knew that a word from me could set things right, I've been tempted again and again to break my oath. Thank God!"—passionately—"Oh, thank God! I can speak now!"

She twisted her shoulders as though freed from some heavy burden.

"Yon thank God? You?" Diana spoke with bitter unbelief. "Why, it was you who made things a thousand times worse between us—you who goaded me into fresh suspicions. You never helped me to believe in him—although you knew the truth! You tried to part us!"

"I know. I did try," acknowledged Olga frankly. "I'd borne it all for years—watched my brother sheltering Nadine, working for her, using his genius to write plays for her—spilling all his happiness at her feet—and I couldn't endure it any longer. I thought—oh! I prayed that when it came to a choice between you and Nadine he would give way—let Nadine fend for herself. And that was why I tried to anger you against him—to drive you into forcing his hand." She paused, her breast heaving tumultuously. "But the plan failed. Max remained staunch, and only his happiness came crashing down about his ears instead. There is"—bleakly—"no saving saints and martyrs against their will."

A silence fell between them, and Diana made a few wavering steps towards a chair and sat down. She felt as though her legs would no longer support her.

In a mad moment, half-crazed by the new fear which the newspaper paragraph had inspired in her, she had closed the only road which might have led her back to Max. Yesterday, still unwitting of how infinitely she had wronged him, passionately, humbly ready to give him the trust he had demanded, she might have gone to him. But to-day, her knowledge of the truth had taken from her the power to make atonement, and had raised a barrier between herself and Max which nothing in the world could ever break down.

She had failed her man in the hour of his need, and henceforth she must walk outcast in desert places.

There were still many gaps in the story to be filled in. But one thing stood out clearly from amidst the chaos which enveloped her, and that was, that she had misjudged her husband—terribly, unforgivably misjudged him.

It was loyalty, not love, that he had given Adrienne, and he had been right—a thousand times right—in refusing to reveal, even to his wife, the secret which was not his alone, and upon which hung issues of life and death and the ultimate destiny of a country—perhaps, even, of Europe itself!

It was to save his country from the Prussian claw that Max had sacrificed himself with the pure fervour of a patriot, at no matter what cost! And she, Diana, by her lack of faith, her petty jealousy, had sent him from her, had seen to it that that cost included even his happiness!

She had failed him every way—trailing the glory of love's golden raiment in the dust of the highway.

If she had but fulfilled her womanhood, what might not her unshaken faith have meant to a man fighting a battle against such bitter odds? No matter how worn with the stress of incessant watchfulness, or wearied by the strain of constant planning and the need to forestall each move of the enemy, he would have found, always waiting for him, a refuge, a quiet haven where love dwelt and where he might forget for a space and be at rest. All this, which had been hers to give, she had withheld.

The silence deepened in the room. The brilliant sunshine, slanting in through the slats of the Venetian blinds, seemed out of place in what had suddenly become a temple of pain. Somewhere outside a robin chirruped, the cheery little sound holding, for one of the two women sitting there, a note of hitter mockery.

Suddenly Diana dropped her head on her hands with a shudder.

"Oh, God!" she whispered. "Oh, God!"

Olga leaned forward and laid a hand on her knee.

"You can go back to him now, and give him all the happiness that he has missed," she said steadily.

"Go back to him?" Diana lifted her head and stared at her with dull eyes. "Oh, no. I shan't do that."

"You won't go back?" Olga spoke slowly, as though she doubted her own hearing.

A faint, derisive smile flickered across Diana's lips. "How could I? Do you suppose that—that having failed him when he asked me to believe in him, I could go back to him now—now that I know everything? . . . Oh, no, I couldn't do that. I've nothing to offer him—now—nothing to give—neither faith nor trust, because I know the whole truth." She spoke with the quiet finality of one who can see no hope, no possibility of better things, anywhere. The words "Too late!" beat in her brain like the pendulum of a clock, maddeningly insistent.

"If only I had been content to go to him without knowing!" she went on tonelessly. "But that paragraph in the paper—it frightened me. I felt that I must know if—if I had been wronging him all the time. And I had!" she ended wearily. "I had." Then, after a moment: "So you see, I can't go back to him."

"You—can't—go—back?" The words fell slowly, one by one, from Olga's lips. "Do you mean that you won't go back now—now that you know he has never failed you as you thought he had? . . . Oh!"—rapidly—"you can't mean that. You won't—you can't refuse to go back now."

Diana lifted a grey, drawn face.

"Don't you see," she said monotonously, "it's just because of that—because he hasn't failed me while I've failed him so utterly—that I can't go back?"

Olga turned on her swiftly, her green eyes blazing dangerously.

"It's your pride!" she cried fiercely. "It's your damnable pride that's standing in the way! Merciful heavens! Did you ever love him, I wonder, that you're too proud to ask his forgiveness now—now when you know what you've done?"

Diana's lips moved in a pitiful attempt at a smile.

"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "It's not that. I've . . . no pride . . . left, I think. But I can't be mean—mean enough to crawl back now." She paused, then went on with an inflection of irony in her low, broken voice. "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' . . . Well, I'm reaping—that's all."

Like the keen thrust of a knife came Olga's answer.

"And must he, too, reap your sowing? For that's what it amounts to—that Max must suffer for your sin. Oh! He's paid enough for others! . . . Diana"—imploringly—"Max is leaving England to-night. Go back to him now—don't wait until it's too late,"

"No." Diana spoke in dead, flat tones. "Can't you understand?"—moving her head restlessly. "Do you suppose—even if he forgave me—that he could ever believe in me again? He would never be certain that I really trusted him. He would always feel unsure of me."

"If you can think that, then you haven't understood Max—or his love for you," retorted Olga vehemently. "Oh! How can I make you see it? You keep on balancing this against that—what you can give, what Max can believe—weighing out love as though it were sold by the ounce! Max loves you—loves you! And there aren't any limitations to love!" She broke off abruptly, her voice shaking. "Can't you believe it?" she added helplessly, after a minute.

Diana shook her head.

"I think you mean to be kind," she said patiently. "But love is a giving. And I—have nothing to give."

"And you're too proud to take."

"Yes . . . if you call that pride. I can't take—when I've nothing to give."

"Then you don't love! You don't know what it means to love! Diana"—Olga's voice rose in passionate entreaty—"for God's sake go to him! He's suffered so much. Forget what people may think—what even he may think! Throw your pride overboard and remember only that he loves you and has need of you. Go to him!"

She ceased, and her eyes implored Diana's. No matter what may have been her shortcomings—and they were many, for she was a hard, embittered woman—at least, in her devotion to her brother, Olga Lermontof approached very nearly to the heroic.

There was a long silence. At last Diana spoke in low, shaken tones, her head bowed.

"I can't!" she whispered. "I shall never forgive myself. And I can't ask Max to—forgive me. . . . He couldn't." The last words were hardly audible.

For a moment Olga stood quite still, gazing with hard eyes at the slight figure hunched into drooping lines of utter weariness. Once her lips moved, but no sound came. Then she turned away, walking with lagging footsteps, and a minute later the door opened and closed quietly again behind her.



CHAPTER XXVII

CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS

Diana sat on, very still, very silent, staring straight in front of her with wide, tearless eyes. Only now and again a long, shuddering sigh escaped her, like the caught breath of a child that has cried till it is utterly exhausted and can cry no more.

She felt that she had come to an end of things. Nothing could undo the past, and ahead of her stretched the future, empty and void of promise.

Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned, instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to renew the struggle. But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a look of infinite concern on his kind old face.

"My child!" he began. "My child! . . . So, then! You know all that there is to know."

Diana looked up wearily.

"Yes," she replied. "I know it all."

The old maestro's eyes softened as they rested upon her, and when he spoke again, his queer husky voice was toned to a note of extraordinary sweetness.

"My dear pupil, if it had been possible, I would haf spared you this knowledge. It was wrong of Olga to tell you—above all"—his face creasing with anxiety as the ruling passion asserted itself irrepressibly—"to tell you on a day when you haf to sing!"

"I made her," answered Diana listlessly. She passed her hand wearily across her forehead. "Don't worry, Maestro, I shall be able to sing to-night."

"Tiens! But you are all to pieces, my child! You will drink a glass of champagne—now, at once," he insisted, adding persuasively as she shook her head, "To please me, is it not so?"

Diana's lips curved in a tired smile.

"Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, Maestro?"

Baroni's eyes grew suddenly sad.

"Ah, my dear, only death—or a great love—can heal the wound that lies in the heart," he answered gently. He paused, then resumed crisply: "But, meanwhile, we haf to live—and prima donnas haf to sing. So . . . the little glass of wine in my room, is it not?"

He tucked her arm within his, patting her hand paternally, and led her into his own sanctum, where he settled her comfortably in a big easy-chair beside the fire, and poured her out a glass of wine, watching her sip it with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes.

"That goes better, hein? This Olga—she had not reflected sufficiently. It was too late for the truth to do good; it could only pain and grieve you."

"Yes," said Diana. "It is too late now. . . . I've paid for my ignorance with my happiness—and Max's," she added in a lower tone. She looked across at Baroni with sudden resentment. "And you—you knew!" she continued. "Why didn't you tell me? . . . Oh, but I can guess!"—scornfully. "It suited your purpose for me to quarrel with my husband; it brought me back to the concert platform. My happiness counted for nothing—against that!"

Baroni regarded her patiently.

"And do you regret it? Would you be willing, now, to give up your career as a prima donna—and all that it means?"

A vision rose up before Diana of what life would be denuded of the glamour and excitement, the perpetual triumphs, the thrilling sense of power her singing gave her—the dull, flat monotony of it, and she caught her breath sharply in instinctive recoil.

"No," she admitted slowly. "I couldn't give it up—now."

An odd look of satisfaction overspread Baroni's face.

"Then do not blame me, my child. For haf I not given you a consolation for the troubles of life."

"I need never have had those troubles to bear if you had been frank with me!" she flashed back. "You—you were not bound by any oath of secrecy. Oh! It was cruel of you, Maestro!"

Her eyes, bitterly accusing, searched his face.

"Tchut! Tchut! But you are too quick to think evil of your old maestro." He hesitated, then went on slowly: "It is a long story, my dear—and sometimes a very sad story. I did not think it would pass my lips again in this world. But for you, who are so dear to me, I will break the silence of years. . . . Listen, then. When you, my little Pepperpot, had not yet come to earth to torment your parents, but were still just a tiny thought in the corner of God's mind, I—your old Baroni—I was in Ruvania."

"You—in Ruvania?"

He nodded.

"Yes. I went there first as a professor of singing at the Borovnitz Conservatoire—per Bacco! But they haf the very soul of music, those Ruvanians! And I was appointed to attend also at the palace to give lessons to the Grand Duchess. Her voice was only a little less beautiful than your own." He hesitated, as though he found it difficult to continue. At last he said almost shyly: "Thou, my child, thou hast known love. . . . To me, too, at the palace, came that best gift of the good God."

He paused, and Diana whispered stammeringly:

"Not—not the Grand Duchess?"

"Yes—Sonia." The old maestro's eyes kindled with a soft luminance as his whispering voice caressed the little flame. "Hers, of course, had been merely a marriage dictated by reasons of State, and from the time of our first meeting, our hearts were in each other's keeping. But she never failed in duty or in loyalty. Only once, when I was leaving Ruvania, never to return, did she give me her lips at parting." Again he fell silent, his thoughts straying back across the years between to that day when he had taken farewell of the woman who had held his very soul between her hands. Presently, with an effort, he resumed his story. "I stayed at the Ruvanian Court many years—there was a post of Court musician which I filled—and for both of us those years held much of sadness. The Grand Duke Anton was a domineering man, hated by every one, and his wife's happiness counted for nothing with him. She had failed to give him a son, and for that he never pardoned her. I think my presence comforted her a little. That—and the child—the little Nadine. . . . As much as Anton was disliked, so much was his brother Boris beloved of the people. His story you know. Of this I am sure—that he lived and died without once regretting the step he had taken in marrying an Englishwoman. They were lovers to the end, those two."

Listening to the little history of those two tender love tales that had run their course side by side, Diana almost forgot for a moment how the ripples of their influence, flowing out in ever-widening circles, had touched, at last, even her own life, and had engulfed her happiness.

But, as Baroni ceased, the recollection of her own bitter share in the matter returned with overwhelming force, and once more she arraigned him for his silence.

"I still see no reason why you should not have told me the truth about Adrienne—about Nadine Mazaroff. Max couldn't—I see that; nor Olga. But you were bound by no oath."

"My child, I was bound by something stronger than an oath."

The old man crossed the room to where there stood on a shelf a little ebony cabinet, clamped with dull silver of foreign workmanship. He unlocked it, and withdrew from it a letter, the paper faintly yellowed and brittle with the passage of time.

He held it out to Diana.

"No eyes but mine haf ever rested on it since it was given into my hand after her death," he said very gently. "But you, my child, you shall read it; you are hurt and unhappy, battering against fate, and believing that those who love you haf served you ill. But we were all bound in different ways. . . . Read the letter, little one, and thou wilt see that I, too, was not free."

Hesitatingly Diana unfolded the thin sheet and read the few faded lines it contained.

"CARLO MIO,

"I think the end is coming for Anton and for me. The revolt of the people is beyond all quelling. My only fear is for Nadine; my only hope for her ultimate safety lies in Max. If ever, in the time to come, your silence or your speech can do aught for my child—in the name of the love you gave me, I beg it of you. In serving her, you will be serving me.

"SONIA."

Very slowly Diana handed the letter back to Baroni.

"So—that was why," she whispered.

Baroni bent his head.

"That was why. I could not speak. But I did all that lay in my power to prevent this marriage of yours."

"You did." A wan little smile tilted the corners of her mouth at the remembrance.

"Afterwards—your happiness was on the knees of the gods!"

"No," said Diana suddenly. "No. It was in my own hands. Had I believed in Max we should have been happy still. . . . But I failed him."

A long silence followed. At last she rose, holding out her hands.

"Thank you," she said simply. "Thank you for showing me the letter."

Baroni stooped his head and carried her hands to his lips.

"My dear, we make our mistakes and then we pay. It is always so in life. Love"—and the odd, clouded voice shook a little—"Love brings—great happiness—and great pain. Yet we would not be without it."



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE AWAKENING

Somehow the interminable hours of the day had at last worn to evening, and Diana found herself standing in front of a big mirror, listlessly watching Milling as she bustled round her, putting the last touches to her dress for the Duchess of Linfield's reception. The same thing had to be gone through every concert night—the same patient waiting while the exquisite toilette, appropriate to a prima donna, was consummated by Milling's clever fingers.

Only, this evening, every nerve in Diana's body was quivering in rebellion.

What was it Olga had said? "Max is leaving England to-night." So, while she was being dressed like a doll for the pleasuring of the people who had paid to hear her sing, Max was being borne away out of her ken, out of her existence for ever.

What a farce it all seemed! In a little while she would be singing as perfectly as usual, bowing and smiling as usual, and not one amongst the crowded audience would know that in reality it was only the husk of a woman who stood there before them—the mere outer shell. All that mattered, the heart and soul of her, was dead. She knew that quite well. Probably she would feel glad about it in time, she thought, because when one was dead things didn't hurt any more. It was dying that hurt. . . .

"Your train, madam."

She started at the sound of Milling's respectful voice. What a lop-sided thing a civilised sense of values seemed to be! Even when you had dragged the white robes of your spirit deep in the mire, you must still be scrupulously careful not to soil the hem of the white satin that clothed your body.

She almost laughed aloud, then bit the laugh back, picturing Milling's astonished face. The girl would think she was mad. Perhaps she was. It didn't matter much, anyway.

Mechanically she held out her arm for Milling to throw the train of her gown across it, and, picking up her gloves, went slowly downstairs.

Baroni, his face wearing an expression of acute anxiety, was waiting for her in the hall, restlessly pacing to and fro.

"Ah—h!" His face cleared as by magic when the slender, white-clad figure appeared round the last bend of the stairway. He had half feared that at the last moment the strain of the day's emotion might exact its penalty, and Diana prove unequal to the evening's demands.

To hide his obvious relief, he turned sharply to the maid, who had followed her mistress downstairs, carrying her opera coat and furs.

"Madame's cloak—make haste!" he commanded curtly.

And when Diana had entered the car, he waved aside the manservant and himself tucked the big fur rug carefully round her. There was something rather pathetic, almost maternal, in the old man's care of her, and Diana's lips quivered.

"Thank you, dear Maestro," she said, gently pressing his arm with her hand.

The Duchess's house was packed with a complacent crowd of people, congratulating themselves upon being able, for once, to combine duty and pleasure, since the purchase-money of their tickets for the evening's entertainment contributed to a well-known charity, and at the same time procured them the privilege of bearing once more their favourite singer. Some there were who had grounds for additional satisfaction in the fact that, under the wide cloak of charity, they had managed to squeeze through the exclusive portals of Linfield House for the first—and probably the last—time in their lives.

As the singer made her way through the thronged hall, those who knew her personally bowed and smiled effusively, whilst those who didn't looked on from afar and wished they did. It was not unlike a royal progress, and Diana heaved a quick sigh of relief when at last she found herself in the quiet of the little apartment set aside as an artistes' room.

Olga Lermontof was already there, and Diana greeted her rather nervously. She felt horribly uncertain what attitude Miss Lermontof might be expected to adopt in the circumstances.

But she need have had no anxiety on that score. Olga seemed to be just her usual self—grave and self-contained, her thin, dark-browed face wearing its habitual half-mocking expression. Apparently she had wiped out the day's happenings from her mind, and had become once more merely the quiet, competent accompanist to a well-known singer.

There was no one else in the artistes' room. The other performers were mingling with the guests, only withdrawing from the chattering crowd when claimed by their part in the evening's entertainment.

"How far on are they?" asked Diana, picking up the programme and running her eye down it.

"Your songs are the next item but one," replied Miss Lermontof.

A violin solo preceded the two songs which, bracketed together in the middle of the programme as its culminating point, made the sum total of Diana's part in it, and she waited quietly in the little anteroom while the violinist played, was encored and played again, and throughout the brief interval that followed. She felt that to-night she could not face the cheap, everyday flow of talk and compliment. She would sing because she had promised, that she would, but as soon as her part was done she would slip away and go home—home, where she could sit alone by the dead embers of her happiness.

A little flutter of excitement rippled through the big rooms when at last she mounted the platform. People who had hitherto been content to remain, in the hall, regarding the music as a pleasant accompaniment to the interchange of the day's news and gossip, now came flocking in through the doorways, hoping to find seats, and mostly having to content themselves with standing-room.