. "I think I was born with
a humdrum nature; a quiet life was always my idea of bliss."

"Sing something else, Di," begged Stair. But Diana shook her head.

"I'm too tired, Pobs," she said quietly. Turning abruptly to Errington
she continued: "Will you play instead?"

Max hesitated a moment, then resumed his place at the piano, and, after a
pause, the three grave notes with which Rachmaninoff's wonderful
"Prelude" opens, broke the silence.

It was speedily evident that Errington was a musician of no mean order;
indeed, many a professional reputation has been based on a less solid
foundation. The Rachmaninoff was followed by Chopin, Tchaikowsky,
Debussy, and others of the modern school, and when finally he dropped his
hands from the piano, laughingly declaring that he must be thinking of
taking his departure before he played them all to sleep, Joan burst out
bluntly:--

"We understood you were a dramatist, Mr. Errington. It seems to me you
have missed your vocation."

Every one laughed.

"Rather a two-edged compliment, I'm afraid, Joan," chuckled Stair
delightfully.

Joan blushed, overcome with confusion, and remained depressed until
Errington, on the point of leaving, reassured her good-humouredly.

"Don't brood over your father's unkind references to two-edged
compliments, Miss Stair. I entirely decline to see any but one meaning
to your speech--and that a very pleasant one."

He shook hands with the Rector and Diana, holding the latter's hand an
instant longer than was absolutely necessary, to ask, rather low:--

"Is it peace, then?"

But the softening spell of the music was broken, and Diana felt her
resentment against him rise up anew.

Silently she withdrew her hand, refusing him an answer, defying him with
a courage born of the near neighbourhood of the Rector and Joan, and a
few minutes later the hum of his motor could be heard as it sped away
down the drive.

Diana lay long awake that night, her thoughts centred round the man who
had come so strangely into her life. It was as though he had been forced
thither by a resistless fate which there was no eluding--for, on his own
confession, he had deliberately sought to avoid meeting her again.

His whole attitude was utterly incomprehensible--a study of violently
opposing contrasts. Diana felt bruised and shaken by the fierce
contradictions of his moods, the temperamental heat and ice which he had
meted out to her. It seemed as if he were